I'm sorry guys but this one hits home for me. Probably because I've made a good career out of writing commercial, closed source software, and I am proud of the work I have done in this area. In the past 5 years I've watched software I helped develop grow annual revenue 5 fold. If we Open Sourced it tomorrow it is very likely we would be put out of business and my livelihood would go away.
I love Linux. I love Unix. I use it everyday. Our servers which service HUGE financial companies run Linux. But I don't write Open Source software (other than a few minor hacks), as I don't feel that it maximizes my utility. There is certainly value in using other people's free software, and I do it all the time. The authors made the decision to open up their software, and it would be a bad engineering decision to not use it. With that said, the free software world wouldn't have an office suite if Sun hadn't gotten desperate, bought a closed source one, opened it up, and lost a ton of money in the process. If you get on the OOo development lists you'll realize that it is not Open Source in the traditional sense. Almost all the developers work for Sun. OOo is huge and very difficult to hack on. I've tried it. Raymond makes some good points. I agree with a lot of what he says as he is a Libertarian, to Stallman's Socialism (Stallmanism?). With that said both Raymond and Stallman have failed to start any business themselves using the models they propose. To me this says a lot. In this industry there are two types of people. Talkers and Doers. Raymond I feel falls solidly in the talker camp, although he talks a good talk. O'rielly is a great company. I have a ton of their books. They have done a significant amount for the Open Source community. Yet Tim doesn't open source all his books. Why? Because he knows that a new company would open up overnight and take all the margins out his business. They would do nothing but print and bind. O'rielly would assume all other costs. The "Definitive Guide to HTTP" would cost $5 instead of $40. Everyone would use it to show how great Open Source is, except Tim, who would be laying off staff, and putting his house on the market, and not publishing the great books that I use everyday. Tim's argument: OpenSource -> Good for you. I have more books to publish. OpenSource -> Bad for me. Takes the margins out my business. Doesn't sound too convincing. I think Jeff is doing the right thing. Leverage other people's work and make a business out of it. The question I must ask as a developer is: Do I want other smart business people like Jeff leveraging my work? Maybe the real question is: Is there any value left in engineering and innovation, or does it all go to the marketing engines? If it is the latter it is a sad day for me as a engineer who loves developing innovative software, and getting paid to do so. _______________________________________________ RLUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug
