Frank Warmerdam wrote:
Rich Gibson wrote:
Hi Landon,
With respect, I think that is a bad idea. Framing this is a matter of
judging various types of citizenship creates an additional obstacle
for companies to dodge when attempting to go FOSS.
> I think it is very possible for a company to release code under an
open source license, but at the same time to be lousy >members of the
open source community.
You initially used the word citizenship, and here moved to 'members of
the open source community,' and decided that some members of the
community are 'lousy.' This framing bothers me. Code is good.
Releasing code is good. Anything beyond that is gravy...
Rich,
I completely agree with you, and find this whole line of review makes
me queasy. It's like trying to judge which companies are "christian
enough", or turning it around which might be communist sympathizers.
I think we can laud some companies for taking progressive steps with
regard to open source, and we can occasionally highlight companies who
have gone out of their way to throw up anti open source FUD (ie. SCO,
Microsoft at times). But beyond that the whole idea smells bad to me.
Without going into specifics, I've seen examples of organizations being
judged as "not open source enough" by puritans and seen the damage it
can cause. It seems like something that splits the community up rather
than putting up a big tent and letting different folks and organizations
come in as far as they are comfortable with.
Landon - don't forget how powerful your blog can be! :-)
Best regards,
Frank, I agree with you (!) mostly, but I have to ask for specific
examples of these organizations that were damaged by the puritans. Did
they have to lay people off because some Stallman wanna-be criticized
them on a blog? Did any IPOs fall flat? Is there a dollar figure for the
damage caused by open source jihadists?
Cheers,
Sean
--
Sean Gillies
http://zcologia.com/news
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