Hey,
On 12/18/2014 02:09 PM, Ludwig Ortmann wrote:
Please explain without analogies and use concrete examples instead.
We release RIOT under BSD. Company X takes the BSD'ed code and sells
some infrastructure around that, but basically, they sell commercially
supported RIOT under a non-free license.
Now there's a bug. It takes weeks to fix, but *we* fix it.
Company X takes the bug fix, releases a new (non-opensource) version and
makes its customers happy.
Open source is nice.
Now there's another bug. It takes weeks to fix, but company X fixes it.
So they release a new (non-opensource) version and make the customers happy.
But as they see their sales not optimal (e.g., there could be more
customers), they decide not to share the bugfix in order to give
potential customers more incentive to invest in their product instead of
just using the open source version.
Same goes with features.
As time goes on, company X's version of RIOT gets a huge advantage over
the closed source version, because, while the open source version cannot
access the closed source improvements, company X can always profit from
the open source improvements. They can even advertise those improvements
when releasing a new version, advertise that they have the better
product, so they can charge money.
My personal problem now is that if I contribute to the open source
version and company X directly makes profit from it, I'm not
contributing to make RIOT the best RIOT around, but I contribute to make
the commercial RIOT the best RIOT.
Also, if there are two bugs, I fix one, company X fixes the other as
they know I'm fixing the first, but they don't share, I feel exploited.
Also, if I fix bugs I *know* are already fixed (because they are in
company X's version), I feel like wasting my time.
Kaspar
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