On Sunday, 20 בMay 2007 18:11, Gilad Ben-Yossef wrote:
> ... consider it "tax on Freedom challanged corporations", does that
> make you feel better? :-)
Yes, I always tend to say that these corporations pay in cash
instead of lines-of-code for the right to use Free-Software.
IMO the main problem is concentration of control. When some
software (e.g: MySQL) reaches a critical mass, the "official"
version becomes very important and version switching becomes
non-trivial in terms of mindshare (while technically it may
be just a recompile).
At this stage, the company *may* be tempted to play various ticks
to preserve its stronghold. We should all be aware of this risk
and try to mitigate it as much as we can.
It should be noted that this centralized model has other disadvantages
to free software:
- The pace of the "official" version is slowed down (single company
resources + some limited comunity involvement).
- The direction of development is focused on this company needs --
this means loosing potential breakthrough in other directions.
- If this company suddenly has major trouble, the project will take
a big blow (until/if someone restarts the GPL'ed version again).
--
Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron
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No, You Can't Have My Rights, I'm Still Using Them
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