Shared Source vs. Open Source

leonbrooks writes "Microsoft are fond of touting Shared Source as being "as good as" Open Source, with a view to muddying the waters as much as possible, and so keeping as many people away from the benefits of Open Source Software (OSS) (particularly Software Libré AKA "Free Software") as they can. This new article analysing the differences arrives just in time for Microsoft's Australia-wide series of "Competitive Hour" misinformation sessions on Open Source, and includes a handy list of potentially showstopper questions. We'd like your help in putting these and other questions to the speaker during such misinformation sessions, with the dual aim of opening the eyes of many of the audience, and reporting back to us what was said so that we can refine the questions to close whatever loopholes are employed in evading these important issues."

Comments

Re:Shared source doesn't work

[DeputySpade]

I work on a scientific project that is supossedly an "open source" project. In reality, it is really shared source. What it comes down to is users from the community reporting bugs and even submitting patches that are never incorporated into the code. The "czar" of the project often refuses to apply these fixes or doesn't do so in a timely manner. It just doesn't work and is just about as pointless as not having the source at all...


It's open source, gonad. The whole point is that you can take the code, fork the project, manage it better that the other guy and have a better product so that the community as a whole benefits. If you continue to get stonewalled by the "owner" and simply give up on getting the code changed, then you really don't get the whole point of OSS in the first place so who the heck are you to say it doesn't work?