-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Alan Lord (News) wrote: > I disagree. Making *everything* open source would be pyrrhic panacea. > Competition is good. Competition is what has spurned the FOSS movement > and proprietary vendors alike. Trying to eradicate the proprietary > market is unrealistic and would stifle innovation.
But isn't this the cornerstone of Free Software? Because the source code is available to all and may be re-used under compatible licenses, and the Free Software community isn't concerning itself with playing silly patent games, everyone is competing on a level playing field. If one product develops an innovative solution that sets it apart from the rest, it naturally becomes the favoured product -- because it is better, not because users are locked into it. When its competitors catch up and implement that innovation themselves, all are forced to look for something else to set them apart from the pack, and thus the software keeps improving. In addition, if a particular set of developers doesn't like the way one product is going, they are free to fork the project and create their own version. This practice itself often drives innovation for the betterment of both projects. Compiz/Beryl/Compiz Fusion is a good recent example of this. Compiz was forked, and continued to focus on the architecture while its fork, Beryl, focused more on the effects. Both were excellent for different reasons and eventually merged back into Compiz Fusion. I remember hanging out on the Samba mailing lists back when Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (LKCL for short) forked the code into Samba TNG to develop PDC functionality for Samba, and thinking what an incredible development model this Free Software allowed - in spite of the frequent flame wars! The fact that many Free Software products are also based on open standards only makes it easier for users to switch between competing products and bolsters this cycle of continual improvement. While I agree that there will almost certainly continue to be a mixture of proprietary and Free software, I don't agree that removing proprietary software from the equation would stifle innovation. JT - -- - ---------------------------------------+-------------------------------- James Tait, BSc | xmpp:[email protected] Programmer and Free Software advocate | VoIP: +44 (0)870 490 2407 - ---------------------------------------+-------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkqHTFIACgkQyDo4xMNTLibDpwCfRtN77+dIE0xbHJ8aqBzkzR/j 6UYAmgOxEdfB1fZGytVZ0ZJD5G3CVmPR =Xf4l -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
