begin quoting Todd Walton as of Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 09:30:41PM -0800: [snip] > That's really surprising to hear that coming from you, Stewart. You > seem to me to have a really good sense of how software should be built > and operated. Also, it seems so obvious to me that open source code > is a value above, beyond, and antecedent to, the list of things you > mentioned above. Seeing a disconnection between the two is kind of > jarring.
Heh. First, you haven't been looking too closely at the internyms, or they've been a bit too obscure. Second, there's no guarantee that the GPL encourages any of those attributes, except polemically. ESR's _The Cathedral and the Bazaar_ touches on why, I think. You don't sign up for an open-source project to do the boring, routine, tedious, sexless, unappreciated maintenance work. It's hard enough getting good people to do that sort of work when you /pay/ them. It takes a strong culture of "Doing It Right" and an agreement on what is "Right" to get that sort of work done. > If the above list of wants (good, solid, stable, tested, documented, > and affordable) comprise your principles on this matter, what would > you stop at to get it? Value given for value received. I do not mind _paying_ for software. I don't like paying a lot, 'cuz I'm cheap -- but I suspect that my values are inverted from many. I won't pay much for games, because they're non-essential and in the long run, rather unimportant, but I don't mind paying money for "serious" programs. I do not demand redistribution rights for software that I purchase, unless I purchase those rights explicitly. Should I choose to build a product incorporating the software, I can either negotiate with the vendor, or prominently note that my product is an "add-on", or I can purchase a copy of the software to (re-)distribute with each of my products. I would *like* to get compilable source from the vendor. (This can be encourage via standard market practices -- buy software from vendors who give you compilable source code.) If I make changes to the source, I can either keep 'em in-house, give 'em back to the vendor, and/or encapsulate 'em so that I can distribute my "enchancements" without distributing the original source. (The problem of distributing "diffs" is that I could change the line-endings and indentation for every file, and then I could give it away... except that I'd then be giving away something that wasn't really mine to give.) Vendors who encourage community development, and who make sure to put plenty of "user-accessible hooks" in their software to make it easy to extend, expand, and enhance their software would presumably do better than vendors who fail to do so. The GPL does not give value for value received. If you build something _on_ a GPL'd project, you are essentially *forced* to give your software away, which is wonderful for the leeches, but not so good for you. You might as well keep your software in-house, instead of polishing and refining it for general distribution. In the ideal world, "proprietary" programs would be distributed as compilable source with no-redistribution clauses, and vendors would provide (free!) feedback/bug-tracking systems for their users. "Free" software would include public-domain software, as well as LGPL-style licensed software. Small-shop programmers could make a living writing and polishing code, instead of trying to make it as complex as possible so as to keep their "support contracts" going. > A rhetorical question... Nevertheless, you got an answer. Hope it was enlightening. -Stewart "You don't want me--you want my brother, who's just behind me" Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
