Re: Open Source

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "FB" == Frank BENNETT <bennett@example.com> writes:

    FB> As the Billy Joel lyric has it, "I'd start a revolution but I
    FB> don't have time".  Jonathan S has responded by saying, I think,
    FB> that the local benefits to the firm are not great enough to
    FB> justify the effort of publishing.

No, as far as I can tell the effort of publishing is negligible.  For
heaven's sake, surely a firm with domain name "e-shuppan" can put a
tarball on a web site with negligible effort!  He's already spent more
effort on this thread than it would take to slap on a license and
publish the code.

What he seems to object to is the effort of running a bazaar-style
project.  He keeps referring to the coordination of dispersed
developers and so on.  To wit:

>>>>> "Jonathan" == Jonathan Shore <jshore@example.com> adds:

    Jonathan> This may be too real-world for some of you open-source
    Jonathan> advocates out there,

Sheesh.  Will you stop with the gratuitous flames?

    Jonathan> but in this specific case, going a distributed

Nobody except you is proposing a distributed development approach.[1]
I'm beginning to wonder if that is FUD, or if you've simply been to too
many ESR seminars.  You're certainly not reading the posts you reply to.

"Open source" means _publication with a free public license_; it does
not specify any development methodology or the organization of the
development group itself.

    Jonathan> open-source route in the short term would mean failure
    Jonathan> to deliver in time.

What Scott and I want to know is what is the downside of the one-line
edits I proposed, one to your crontab for regular snapshots and one to
your release script for releases?  I think that is a valid question.[2]

So far it seems unanswerable.  The only presentable[3] reason I can
come up with is "I don't want to publish anything I don't plan to
support."  I think that is a valid position to take; personal and
corporate reputations are at stake.

There are plenty of full-time parasites out there (go read any LUG ML,
even our own archives) who contribute _nothing_ and yet seem to expect
free-dial telephone hand-holding!  Despite the "NO WARRANTY" clause,
your reputation _is_ at risk if you don't provide support.

But I think a real supporter of open source should take that risk.

    Jonathan> That is correct - there is no software product.

Then why are you looking to hire _programmers_ to work with Mozilla?

Just because you don't intend to sell it doesn't mean the
_programmers_ produce no product.  Any code that does useful work in
any context is potentially useful to others.  Sharing useful code is
what open source is about.

Given the world-wide web, concealing your code requires a motive
beyond "publication costs".


Footnotes: 
[1]  There are reasons to suppose that for many open source projects,
distributed development is the way to go.  But it is obviously not
applicable to all open source tasks; writing patches is done by
individuals, not committees, in almost all cases.  Often enough whole
programs are written by a single individual, then published.

[2]  Heck, if you want to go really cathedral, you can omit the
snapshots.

[3]  "I plan to make money by controlling redistribution" is certainly
economically and ethically valid (except to rms), but not presentable
on a LUG ML.

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