When Eclipse was released by IBM I would imagine life got very difficult for the people selling proprietary Java IDEs.
Let's just say for the sake of discussion that all those other people shriveled up, and Eclipse was the only thing left. Would it matter then how IBM managed Eclipse? Would it then become important that IBM might not be a good open source citizen? Would it not matter because developers could always fork the code an move on without IBM? I'm not saying this would ever happen. I'm just providing a hypothetical example. What do you think? Does the ability to fork code mean that the behavior or the company managing an open source project becomes irrelevant? The Sunburned Surveyor -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gregor J. Rothfuss Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 12:49 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Measuring Open Source Citenzenship - Reconsidering Landon Blake wrote: > I had never before considered that a company might release source code > under an open source license as a way to harm a competitor. That got me > to thinking, what motivates companies to release code under an open > source license? After a company does so, what makes it an ethical member > of the open source community? Is source code like drug money? Can it be > tainted if depending on the source? increasing competition by releasing open source software is a good thing and has nothing to do with ethics. _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking Warning: Information provided via electronic media is not guaranteed against defects including translation and transmission errors. If the reader is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this information in error, please notify the sender immediately. _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
