Anyone who knows me knows I'm a huge Red Hat advocate with their 100% GPL focus for all their products, nothing proprietary whatsoever. But something being GPL, or even open source, doesn't necessarily mean it's the best solution for problem.
As such, in my professional endeavors, I've had to differentiate between more than just "open" and "proprietary." In fact, the two terms are so broad and non-differentiating I despise them (much like I despise the common two views in American politics only being "liberal" or "conservative"). It's really about "mitigating risk" to those investments -- such as data -- that an organization has made, something that can be easily both qualified and quantified in metric. So when my editor at Sys Admin was asking for copy in late 2004, I decided to write an extensive article on this subject last second for her. The result was a 2-part "Licensing Risks, Not Revolutions." This article set was not available on-line until CMP Media just more recently made many of its older Sys Admin articles on-line, including that 2-part article. As such, I thought I'd bring them up here for reading, possibly agreement/disagreement, but more in the hope of giving you'all something to "sell" your clients/customers on (especially those in the US who have been wrongly told "open source" is like "communism," of which it is not -- at least not until it's mandated**). http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2007/03/my-sys-admin-magazine-articles-now-on.html Remember, as you read them understand I'm a classic believer in American Republicanism from the standpoint that capitalism is very compatible with the "social contract"** and "virtues" of a public good, and that can't be mandated, but must be entrusted to the people themselves. Yes, I know, some disagree -- and even when the US was founded, this was also debated.** Understand I'm _not_ a proponent of mandating open source with legislation, only mandating open standards -- "equal opportunity" or "freedom," but _not_ "fair" as "fair" tends to be defined differently. This is all while I strongly believe in the right to Assembly, including individually choosing (a key aspect) of working in a community towards a public good (unlike mandating and forcing everyone to work towards something, which we may not all agree on and a chronic issue with socialism IMHO). It's hard to avoid the political aspects of such debates. But as long as we think freely and don't just "blindly align" ourselves with "X is bad, Y is good," it's actually a very deep and interesting dive into what is "good" for a client, as well as the "community."** After all, even the founders of the United States -- based on views and writings of many British, French and other philosophers of various nationalities -- had this debate several centuries ago. As I will argue for as long as I live, I am by, of and for "open source" as a contributor, developer and integrator, but by no means do I think "open source" needs -- let alone should -- be mandated, as there are many other types of software that do add value for select customers. The real "enemy" of any company is "Hostageware" (sometimes called "Abandonware"), and it too can be the result of even Open Source -- it's just not as intentional as some "Hostageware." **If you're not following these concepts, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism_in_the_United_States -- Bryan J. Smith Professional, Technical Annoyance mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://thebs413.blogspot.com -------------------------------------------------------- Fission Power: An Inconvenient Solution _______________________________________________ lpi-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/lpi-discuss
