/me putting on flame-retardent firesuit
the problem of openness of code, is critically related to openess of
data in open shareable formats.
the reason, that opening google's up the future of KML to the OGC and
we hope W3C has less to do with owner ship of the code than it does, the
much larger future and benefits of open, shared of structured geodata,
that can be created and shared in by any application.
a counter example is the use of proprietary tools to create stuctured
data that can only be read by proprietary readers. e.g. a world health
atlas, where very important data, that should be shared widely for
great social benefit is exportable instead in proprietary data
structures - in one of case, arcobjects - incorporating important,
though complex topological geodata.
- mike
Dan Brickley wrote:
Regarding "I'm not saying that what these companies are doing is
wrong, but I think it is obvious that some companies are better open
source partners than others."
1. it's far from obvious to me that there is a single simple ranking
A company could be a fabulously good citizen in opensource terms,
pouring millions into community, openness or whatever, ... yet have
chosen to boost opensource for entirely competitive reasons, eg. to
damage a rival in the marketplace, support a file-format that they've
other investments in, or whatever.
You mention that this might be considered "unethical". Others might
consider it business as usual.
How such scenarios are ranked is so subjective, that it becomes
painfully simplistic to claim "betterness" is in the general case
obvious. Of course there are some cases which are going to be obvious:
If my company Semantic Web Vapourware Ltd releases my 1982 ZX81 classic
10 PRINT "DANBRI IS COOL"
20 GOTO 10
Under GPL (share & enjoy!) perhaps I'm being a lesser opensource
citizen than say IBM; 50% of the lines in my public codebase are
probably considered harmless, after all. And they may not be entirely
original, either. But what practical purpose does such a ranking
achieve? Is a company that ships the above code under GPL a "better"
or "worse" opensource citizen than Microsoft? *who cares* :)
2. Why pick on companies?
Same issues crop up with individuals and non-profit organizations such
as universities. Some are better or worse at various aspects of ceding
and sharing control, at communicating, at following through on
promises, on balancing vanity and leadership, ... at making themselves
understood.
I really don't see much merit in pursuing quite this line of
investigation. Sure, list some factors that work well or don't, in
various contexts. But don't try to turn them into a single ranking,
... and note that many of those factors work just same for
individuals who are opensourcing their personal works...
cheers,
Dan
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