On Fri 21 March 2003 17:04, Joerg Schilling wrote: > From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Mar 19 05:11:22 2003 > > >> You definitely completely missunderstood the spirit of free > >> software. > > > >The issue, at least for me, is not "free" it's open source. It's > > software= =20 > >which can not be just pulled out from under me because the > > vendor or auth= or=20 > >has a brain fart and decides to drop my most useful feature, > > refuse to po= rt=20 > > A much more realistic idea is why there is no source for > cdrecord-ProDVD: > > Commercial companies steel my work and sell it secretly.
Two observations: 1) Apparently, cdrecord doesn't fulfill the needs of a significant group of potential users. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a market for it. 2) Other FOSS projects (xvid comes to mind, see [1]) have succesfully used publicising of infringements to get the violating companies to comply with the license. It seems to be a very succesful tactic so far, but cdrecord can't use it apparently. It seems to me that this is a symptom of the way cdrecord development is done. cdrecord is open source (at least the CD-only version), but its development is done in the classical cathedral style. Open source isn't just about having the source available, it's about open development, it's about having a community of developers and users, and communication within that community. There is no such thing as a cdrecord development community. There is no cdrecord-devel mailinglists where patches are sent to and discussed, there is no cdrecord-users mailinglist where people can get help from others in the community, and the developers (Joerg Schilling mainly) are very closed when they answer email, never explaining their answers. Without infrastructure and some help understanding what's really going on, no community will form. This means that cdrecord never reaps the benefits of its being open source, and it leads to forks and unhappiness between developers. A good example of that is the latest developments in the XFree86 community (see [2]). Proof that it can in fact work even for technically complicated projects is provided by the Gatos project [3] which aims to create drivers for capturing video using ATI cards, and has a nice and friendly mailinglist where users and developers can discuss anything related to the project). Another good example of the power of an active community is the reaction of the CDex community on NeoAudio. NeoAudio was a completely legal derived work, but it wasn't very nice. Read for yourself at [4]). With all this and his bitter comments about not getting anything back for cdrecord being open source on this list in mind, I think it's Joerg who doesn't really understand open source. Or maybe he does, but is just not half as good at managing a user community as he is at writing code. A couple of messages ago (bit hard to follow the thread since Joergs mail reader doesn't understand threading) he asked for a better solution for the stealing of cdrecord source: "Give me a different _working_ way tp protect my code from being abused by commercial companies and I would even publish source." Here's a way. It has proven itself to be succesful in a number of situations. But it requires a change in the way cdrecord development is managed and done, and users are treated. I'm not saying it should be done, just giving an option. Lourens [1] http://www.xvid.org/press/press-20020822-en.html [2] http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/20/1215243&mode=thread&tid=104 [3] http://gatos.sf.net [4] http://www.teammurder.com/archives/000205.html -- GPG public key: http://home.student.utwente.nl/l.e.veen/lourens.key -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
