Prescript: Quit CC'ing me. I am on the list. On Thu, Aug 14, 2003 at 03:52:00PM -0400, Edmund Lian wrote: > Not necessarily. I can think of one other reason--he may not want > users to be able to change the code locally, so creating a local fork > that would eventually be impossible to update.
I think you're stretching a bit here. Preventing code forks for the sake of maintenance is plainly naieve. It implies that the source code is or can be available to those that ask. Only those people that are interested are even going to look at it anyway. The majority of end-users wouldn't know the difference, so obfuscating code for their sake is a null op. Regardless, if a fork happens, it either succeeds or dies. Why suppress a potentially useful development because of some deep-seeded need to stroke an ego, to be a control-freak. If you're going to give the software away, why not give it "free" as in "libre", not just free as in beer? Besides, there have been a number of very successful forks. One to note is the gcc and egcs fork. Each project realized that although the reason the fork happened, their code was taking convergent paths. Aside from being grossly off-topic, this ground has been covered many times by more literate people than me. Check out Eric S. Ramond's site or Richard M. Stallman's. Google if you need URL's. -- Chad Walstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.wookimus.net/ assert(expired(knowledge)); /* core dump */
pgp00000.pgp
Description: PGP signature
