Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 01:37:54PM -0500, Brian T. Sniffen wrote: >> >> * There's less incentive to develop new changes: unless you can afford >> >> a stable of developers large enough to deploy new features faster >> >> than your competitors can copy them, you gain no competitive >> >> advantage from innovation. Software gets developed only to scratch >> >> personal itches. >> > >> > This sure sounds like a (poor) argument against open source in general. >> >> Not at all. Open-source is great for infrastructure software -- >> Linux, Apache, Emacs. Many companies have private modifications to >> Linux or Apache which they use internally; some of these get released, >> some don't. Everybody benefits by contributing to the common good. >> For example, several network infrastructure companies use Linux on >> their embedded devices, release kernel changes and improvements, and >> keep their core technology in-house. It's not that it's under a >> proprietary license, just that it's not distributed at all. This >> model works wonderfully for the free software community and for those >> companies. > > I'm not disagreeing with this. I'm saying that your argument (top quote) can > be applied to open source in general, and we all know it to be false in that > case; so how are web apps so different?
As I said: existing mechanisms of licensing Free Software (e.g. GNU GPL and MIT/X11) provide an impetus for improvement. A compulsory-sharing license, as might bring us closer to BrinWorld, removes much of the financial incentive for such improvement. In such a world, the changes made, used, and later released by IBM, Red Hat, Akamai, Apple... all wouldn't have been made, and our software technology would be that much more primitive. -Brian -- Brian T. Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/