John Sonnenschein wrote: > On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 10:31 PM, Ian Collins <ian at ianshome.com> wrote: > >> John Sonnenschein wrote: >> > > >> > I don't want to be free labour for Sun. >> But you are happy for Sun's employees to be free labour for you? >> > > Sun's employees are paid, ergo not free. But either way, a paid > developer doesn't have to buy in to the concept of open source at all, > it's great if they do, but it's ultimately a non-issue so long as > their employer continues > > They are free to you because you benefit from their labour through free software. > > > And with Sun doing it's own thing in spite of the community, I fear > that this will never change ( after all, why would you join an > open-source project if your concerns just going to be ignored by the > company that "really owns" the community ? ) > > That's where OpenSolaris differs form a number of well known open source projects where the the project came before the companies and their paid developers. I'm not aware of any other large open source project (with the possible exception of Netscape/Mozilla) where this has happened, so we are navigating difficult and uncharted waters.
As Sun represents the vast majority of the community and bears an even bigger majority of the financial burden, they have the right as well as the might to steer the project to benefit their commercial distribution. Despite Sun being the main driver, we do have independent and successful OpenSolaris distributions. I don't see any of the people involved with those whinging and whining on these lists, they just get on and *DO*. Ian
