As a preface to this message, I should say that I grew up to be a philosopher. My college degrees prepared me well for the conversation I want to start, the degrees being Philosophy and World Religions and Philosophies. As the world has developed since 1996 (yes, I am a young-in') computer Operating Systems and Development Platforms have become more and more objects of "religious fervor" rather than simply tools used to accomplish a task. One can argue the use of any two modern environments the same as one can extol the virtues of living according to the Buddhist life to that of Rastafarians, in a religious study sense anyway. I have a feeling that everyone on this list wants to see RBTI succeed from a personal devotion to an environment that has served us well in the past and appears to be ready to do even better for us in the (not so distant) future.
Also, please read through this entirely before you respond. I have had some very good conversations with people who have helped me develop these ideas to fit the history of the R:Base community. I don't have radical ideas here and the underlying fabric is a desire to build the community and structuralize many of the things that are already happening here. With that in mind... I mentioned before that I saw some parallels between what we (the R:Base Community) do online and at conferences with the Open Source culture that exists for projects like Linux, Mozilla, and Ogg Vorbis. Maybe I should list some ways that this works in those arenas before you make some assumptions from what the media has said... Open Source projects do not require that all components used by an application also be Open Source. It only affects what the "contributor" wishes to give to the "world at large" for free with only the following requirements: (taken from http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php) 1. Free Redistribution 2. Source Code 3. Derived Works 4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor 7. Distribution of License 8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product 9. The License Must Not Restrict Other Software View the web site to see exactly what this means. It is very specific. If a person releases a piece of code for any environment as Open Source, only that piece of code is affected. So, let's say that I write an R:Base program to convert a file of global coordinates from USGS NAD-27 to TopoGrafix data format files to import into my GPS. I could see how something like that could be useful to other people and would like to benefit from further development that anyone contributes. If I were to release this to the community as Open Source, anyone who uses the code I wrote would have to abide by the rules of the Open Source License of my choosing. (There are a few models.) The license only applies to the component and not anything that is separate from the component. In the R:Base environment, all copyrights, licenses and other things that belong to RBTI or any other company remain unaffected by this introduction of Open Source ideas. Here's the parallel. Every day, I see people helping each other work out problems with code that is being developed. This is a marvelous thing. It doesn't exist many places outside of a team of employees or co-owners. When we go to conferences, we get a cool CD with tons of useful code and applications that we can freely model new projects on. We can take this a step further. Here's what I have in mind. We should have a organization or web site, un-connected from RBTI (only to emphasize that it isn't RBTI's self promotion, but a real, active development community) that archives projects (snippets, components, programs, whatever...) that can be used under some type of Open Source schema. Some of these projects have already been distributed through the listserv, but more will start to flood the gates as the migration to the magical RB 7.0 begins in a few months. There are several models for project ownership that exist in a variety of arenas, but for this discussion, let's just say that this org/site will maintain the projects as requested by the project owners. Very simple, as far as it's purpose. Why would we want to do this? We all want RBTI to make a killing on the magical 7.0. Of that I am sure. We all feel that the price paid for the tools and licenses are fair and that Razzak's team has performed beyond our expectations to be where they are. Being able to show the world the "virility" of the environment through a grass roots initiative could make a difference to new developers. It would certainly astonish all the people I run into who ask me if R:Base is still around when I wear my RBTI gear proudly in public. It also would be a good starting place for people designing their first complicated projects to get top quality components to create the best applications possible in the shortest period of time. I was once asked what I thought would help RBTI succeed most effectively without flatly giving it a donation. My answer was and still is: Promote R:Base development by new developers by showing them what can be done and giving them components to get started and models to work from that are easy to access. Then give them the ability to contribute to and receive recognition from the from the same community that made them successful. What do you all think? 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