On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 7:38 PM, Kent Fredric <[email protected]> wrote: > Things such as donating to open-source organizations, the sponsorship of > open-source events and so-forth, the willingness to encourage staff to fix > projects they work with and send patches upstream, all these things seem > companies are less willing to put energy towards, and instead seem to have a > more parasitic relationship with open-source instead of synergistic.
There are many different ways to use Open Source Software and Free Software. One of these is to act as the beneficiary, to be "a user". You have used a strongly negative word to describe this type of interaction, but the whole aim of the GPL/FSF is to empower the "user", without demanding anything back. However, and possibly closer to what you intended, there are many companies that claim to be "Open Source" when in fact all they really are, is "a user". Their claims make it sound like they are contributing -- and in fact they are, they are contributing by making positive statements about the existence and value of Open Source Software and/or Free Software. This is a contribution. It's just marketing/advertising that makes it sound more significant. I think that you are right about the other end of your description -- it would be good to identify "synergistic" contributors. But actually putting a baseline definition behind that term might be difficult; for example my company uses OSS/FS, it recommends OSS/FS solutions, it chooses and deploys OSS/FS for its customers - but it doesn't donate to or fund OSS/FS events or projects, it doesn't make significant efforts to bugfix or patch. It resents being labelled "parasitic" and would rather be labelled "a user", in line with the GPL's intentions. > This > is a somewhat harsh accusation I admit, and I don't mean to make it sound > like the companies doing this are "scum", its just I see the value in > improvement of the world for everyone as not being of less importance than > the furtherance of one organization. I read your use of the word as your early draft version of a manifesto for a kudos page. Try to "ego boost" everyone involved, not just the ones that you think belong at the top of the tree :-) I suggest that you hone your suggested page contents, and try to establish it for the wider NZ community on wiki.linux.net.nz (or via wlig.org.nz while the recent server failures are being addressed), along with your criteria; and treat it a bit like wikipedia, allowing entries but adding "citation needed" markers where external evidence is desired. Good luck. -jim _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.canterbury.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
