On Thu, 17 Jan 2002, Ira Abramov wrote:
>
> Good! Linux-il is not just about bits, we're also about ideals and
> socialism :)
>
I'd like to disagree with you here that there's anything Socialist about
OSS. But a philosophical discussion about the idealogical origins of the
Free Software movement would be pointless. All I can say is that it is:
1. Inevitable. (by virtue of Murphy's law)
2. A good and proper way to manage software for the general profit of the
public.
> On Thu, 17 Jan 2002, Shlomi Fish wrote:
>
> > Endeavour2, there was drag and drop, but one which Xmms refused to
> > accept. I contacted their support person, a certain Taura Milana
>
> Taura Milana is a multi-talented woman, and she's the one who wrote the
> application, so it WOULD make perfect sense to contact her, being the
> main developer... please don't play down her part as a mere "support
> person" :)
>
I did not. I just say that she is a support person, not only a support
person. Ira, do you happen to know her by any chance?
> > She quickly reproduced a patched Alpha version of Endeavour 2, which I
> > downloaded and found to drag and drop extra-fine into Xmms.
>
> great, but that's because she's a very nice person. did you try that
> with Shareware?
> are you sure a commercial product would not have gotten
> the same level of attention? and OTOH, have you never seen rude replies
> from OSS developers that would tell you "you have the source, patch it
> yourself, I'm busy"?
>
I did not encounter too many rude replies from OSS developers like that.
But then again, I never tried to push my involvement with OSS projects to
the limit. But naturally, I expect such things to happen, as OSS software
comes with no guarantee for maintainability.
> As much as it is heart-warming to see this type of stories, it's a story
> about the humans behind the software, not about the licensing scheme
> that's in front of it (feel free to change the juxtaposition in your
> mind).
You are right, yet you are also a bit wrong. If the source code to
Endeavour 2 would not have been available, (as well as the sources to
Xmms and FM) I could not have helped out Ms. Milana.
> Nice people will be nice everywhere, though in my heart, I want
> to believe that nice people tend to choose releasing their stuff as OSS,
> given the financial possibility.
>
I'm not sure I agree with you here. I don't see what makes a person who
distributes a commercial software any less "nice". Friendliness has
nothing to do with morality or productivity or for the willingness to
release your code as free software. It is well-known that Henry Ford was
greatly antipathic and unfriendly, and he was a supreme value producer.
OTOH many mafia dons are very friendly.
> > I believe the moral of this story is something along the lines of ESR's
> > the Cathedral and the Bazaar or Muli's "what Linux is to me" Haifux'
>
> C&B is a heap of bull, excuse me.
>
> > By working in an OSS Ms. Milana and I were able to add a new
> > feature, just by Using the Source<tm>. Can you do it in MS-Windows
> > with the same technical and legal ease? I highly doubt it.
>
> no. but if Endeavour was a commercial product, open source or not, they
> would be obliged to pass it through a long cycle and QA and all sorts of
> stuff to be able to give you warrenty on the product, because money
> changed hands to license the product and they are liable for legal
> action on your part if that quick patch ruins something.
>
But what if Endeavour 2 was shareware? Then, they would not be able to
finance this kind of thing. OK, I could have contacted the developer and
asked him to add this feature to this code. And then he would have had to
do all the research on his own. Remember that I helped Taura a bit, by
making some research on my own.
> the moral is: Gratis OSS = no warrenty. for warrenty you need thourough
> QA, man hours spent on methodic testing and legal backup. that costs
> money, so clients must be charged money, which in turn makes free
> redistribution a hole in the developer's pocket. Commercial OSS is not a
> theoretical problem, it is literally doesn't pay the rent. see what
> happend to VA-Research in the last 4 years, see Red-Hat's stock
> situation. the FSF is doing fine, but mostly from donations.
>
> So how DO you make OSS work financially? take the "donation to society"
> concept one step forward, call it a a social donation by law and award
> those individuals from the taxpayers' money. when you want to judge a
> Redmond monopoly to do "Avodot Sherut Lakehila", you make them develop
> an app the community needs, dictate the specs and make them finance
> development and QA. you can't make them open existing source
> retroactively because of the messy patent laws, but donating new OSS is
> not such a bad idea, and not too utopic or idealistic. I think I already
> saw a few days ago an article in /. about legal standartization of
> public-funded development to be released to the public who funded
> it. Think about it...
>
It was a rather long paragraph which I did not quite understand. In any
case, the way I see it:
1. OSS must be developed by choice. (E.g: you cannot force Microsoft to
release anything as open-source)
2. I don't mind passing a law that software that was developed for a
public institute must be made open-source. For example, this software that
the Israeli Government sells in order to calculate the price of cars,
(after this newfangled pricing system took place). They sell it which is
outrageous.
Of course, software for Military purposes should be excluded, due to
security reasons.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
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Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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