Open Source And The Obligation To Recycle

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday January 3, 2002 @06:40AM from the making-the-world-a-better-place dept.

Lisa writes "Tim O'Reilly has a piece called "Open Source and the Obligation to Recycle" in his weblog, where he urges every company whose products are "obsolete" to consider making them available under an open source license, or putting them in the public domain, thereby enriching the soil of our collective commons. (Interestingly, the first posting on the weblog disagrees, saying "...Giving away the software of failed companies could turn every corporate failure into a disaster for everyone else.)""

1 of 312 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:Why dosen't he follow his own advice by checkitout · 2002-01-03 06:50 · Score: 5, Informative

But if you look at the complete Open Books list, you'll also see a number of out of print books. These books were open sourced not because we wanted to spread the software or the ideas, but because we felt an obligation to make the material available to those who could make use of it even after we were no longer able to sell the books profitably ourselves. This is recycling in action.

If had you bothered to read the article, he mentions that he has.