Yesterday, Jerry Feldman gleaned this insight:
> Having spent a few years at Digital.Compaq, where binary compatibility
> is the way of life, I kind of side with Linus. With open source, a
> well designed application can be rebuilt in the field even my novices.
> The lack of binary compatibility does have the affect of making a
> customer's applications fail when upgrading to a new release.
See, I don't really see this as necessarily being a major issue... at
least in terms of vendor-provided apps. The problem is that large
companies like DEC/Compaq have painted themselves into a corner with
the philosophy of "If we recompile your code, we must charge you for the
upgrade." If they would only get it through their heads that they can
recompile the code for the same version of the application (same code
base, updated only as necessary to make sure it runs on the new OS) then
it would be o.k.
The major problem with this is that there is no way to solve that problem
for third-party software, since the software vendors make money on selling
upgrades, so they aren't likely to want to provide this kind of service.
But they should. Even better, they should provide the source so you can
compile it yourself if you change OS revs, as well as inspect the code for
usability/security and all those other wonderful things that Open Source
brings...
One potential way around this is for software companies to sell OPTIONAL
maintenance contracts... "We'll recompile your code for you on whatever OS
updates you may require, provided we support the platform, for a
non-trivial but reasonable fee." How you define those things is a detail
that would need to be worked out, but that's the gist of it. Very much
like the model RMS had in mind in the first place. Give away the software
(figuritively, as in give the source code when the software is purchased),
but sell support, training, and/or maintenance services.
--
You know that everytime I try to go where I really want to be,
It's already where I am, cuz I'm already there...
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Derek D. Martin | Unix/Linux Geek
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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