> As far as having no responsibility to the people/companies that USE > Apache, I put forth this argument. When a company bases it's business > or a person bases their career on a program, in MY OPINION, there then > springs into a being an implied responsibility on the development team > to support the product and keep it alive. IE they have put THEIR MONEY > behind this product. When a web hosting company says "I use Apache.", > that means that they are backing Apache with THEIR MONEY. No, they did > NOT pay the ASF to RENT a license of Apache but they are STILL spending > money on Apache.
That is total bullshit. When a company pays someone to support a product, whether that someone be a company like Covalent or an independent software developer, THEN and only then is there any implied responsibility to that person's needs. It is completely insane to think that a volunteer group of developers is going to be responsible to all 60 million or so users just because they happen to like the free product. If you aren't contributing, you aren't part of the Apache community. People within the community will work on the problems that they consider to be most important. People outside the community can only influence what they do by performing the work necessary to eventually be considered part of the community, or by paying someone within the community to do it for them. The only responsibility we have is to keeping the community open to new volunteers. ....Roy
