On Sunday 06 May 2001 06:27 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I find myself sitting on both sides of the fence - I'm a programmer,
> tech writer, and (in my copious spare time) a wannabe SF/Fantasy
> author. (hey, where do you think I got the motivation to learn
> writing skills!)
>
> As all of those, I want the writing/hacking with which I earn a
> living to be .. well ... *MINE*.
<snip>
> ALSO as all of those, I want the writing/hacking which I give away
> freely and willingly to be distributed freely and used widely.
<snip>
> I think this is no more contradictory than - say - an electrician
> giving his time to wire up the local Girl Guide (Girl Scout in the
> US) cabin. Or a carpenter designing and supervising the building of
> an adventure playground at her childrens' school.
<snip>
I can definitely see that logic. But how about this scenario: a company hires
you to write some code for a specific project, pays you, then releases that
code as open-source software? What if a client paid you to do a particular
job, and they didn't care what you did with the software. Would you keep it,
or release it as open-source?
Also, I do want to distinguish between open-source sharing of software and
piracy - I generally don't use pirated software, and 99% of the software I
use is either bought or open-source/freeware (I also religiously pay for
shareware - since I think it's also a good model).
But back to the open-source issue in question: if you could get paid anyway,
*and* give away the software without it affecting your income, would you do
that?
I guess part of this too is seeing writing software as as service*rather than
a product. I do a lot of coding for web applications, and get paid for
implementing those applications on our clients web sites. At the same time,
I'm releasing that code as open-source, and in our contracts we specify that
that's the fate of all of the code we write for the client.
I'm thinking that if the proprietary/closed-source paradigm wins out, we get
a world full of companies like microsoft, with few alternatives. I don't like
that scenario.
Michelle
--
------------
Michelle Murrain, Ph.D.
President
Norwottuck Technology Resources
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.norwottuck.com
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