Asuffield: > [...]
I have advocated, but not found any uptake for, the notion that companies like Red Hat ought to put up a very big and very loud firewall separating themselves from the larger community. For example, they might decide as policy to always make their patches to public projects available, well documented, and advertised --- but to never submit them to public projects officially or discuss them on lists. Employees should certainly never participate in public projects on company time and, hopefully, there is no incentive to feel they are encouraged to do it after hours for gain at work. Of course, at the same time, Red Hat and Novell and IBM and Sun and HP (etc.) can have a low-walled, transparent garden for their fork. This would be a bit like a wealthy private land owner who, though he has many cattle, never grazes them on the commons -- yet does put a pile of manure by the front gate with a big "Free!" sign on it. The paupers can happily truck that shit to the commons as fertilizer -- a win-win. Unscrupulous competitors might still try to embed themselves in the public space: that is a good reason for no serious spender to ever do business with them. -t _______________________________________________ Gnu-arch-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-arch-users GNU arch home page: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnu-arch/
