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Notice who's selling what tales | 326 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Single-Source used to be considered bad
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 30 2013 @ 10:55 AM EST
Slight tangent here, but I know that a few decades ago, there was the mantra of
"A single source supplier is an instant no sale."

I've also heard that Microsoft got around this with some promises should they go
bankrupt. Does anyone know about this?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Notice who's selling what tales
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 30 2013 @ 10:58 AM EST
If you look closely, you'll see that all the "GPL is evil, BSD is
good" stories are coming from *SOFTWARE COMPANIES*

It's a bit obvious why they'd be selling those tales.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

not religion, but software that works
Authored by: Imaginos1892 on Wednesday, January 30 2013 @ 12:37 PM EST
We demand compensation for our work. The closed-shop
code companies think we're irrational because we want
our compensation in a form other than cash, and they
can't understand our motives.
-------------------
Mrs. Tweedy! The chickens are revolting!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Free vs. Open Source
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 30 2013 @ 07:10 PM EST
Free (as in FSF) and Open Source (as in OSI) are terms which
refer to essentially identical bodies of software, but very
different underlying beliefs and motivations.

Your post is a good summary of the Open Source viewpoint,
for example that the GPL is good because it leads to good
quality software. I think this is true.

The Free Software take on the example of the GPL would more
or less that the GPL is good because it follows correct
moral principles. I think this is also true.

So for big projects, where there are the "many eyes" to make
"all bugs shallow", either attitude seems to lead to
favorable results.

But for the small projects which comprise a big share of the
free/open software out there, they are not so similar.
There is a lot of software that is perfectly Free, but does
not reflect the benefits of "open source" because it is
mostly a one-man project. Programs like this are often very
feature-incomplete, and may even "suck" from a technical
standpoint. However, everyone is granted the right to make
them better, which IMHO is a more important advantage than a
technically better or more complete program that cannot be
improved by its users.

I think the refutation to the thread article is not that the
GPL is really only about code quality. I think the proper
argument is that fairness, transparency, and cooperation are
immensely important in any context, and it is wrong to
dismiss these values as being arbitrary "religious" beliefs.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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