Slashdot Mirror
Open Source at TiVo
CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an article by TiVo co-founder Jim Barton, in which he explains how the company relies on open source technologies to create a closed-source product. A good lesson in how other companies can do the same. From the article: Careful management of our sources to abide by the terms of the GNU General Public License while protecting our proprietary developments is a small price to pay for this benefit."
There is a licence difference to consider here. GPL _requires_ the changes be made available in source form if the binary is distributed. BSD licences pretty much allows any company to take code, make proprietary changes to it and doesn't require distribution of those changes.
Most companies, if they can, will use 100% open source to create totally closed-source solutions. The exceptions being the 100% microsoft shops, and those guy have all their profits eaten up by licenses, and "of course" they won't open source anything because the licenses restrict that they "can't". (I at one time worked as an ASP programmer and am happily a three-years now PHP programmer).
The old point was, pay for a product, you pay for support; however, this is not true anymore (just try and call MS technical support without having a license you pay $1000 for).. But something like MySQL or PHP you can easily and quickly get help in any forum..
But I digress.. the point is, most "smart" companies do this to keep costs down.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
TiVo runs a modified version of Linux, which is protected by the GPL. Therefore, legally they have always been required to release their source.
TiVo has distributed source code for the version of the Linux kernel included in the devices for as long as I can remember.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I don't know why we let them get away with it all this time. For those who don't know, TiVo runs a modified version of Linux, which is protected by the GPL. Therefore, legally they have always been required to release their source. I guess the Slashdot crowd has always let them slide because they're jizzing their tighty whities over being able to watch 20 hours of Simpson's episodes in an afternoon. If we don't look out for our rights, no one will. Let's give 'em hell.
What are you talking about?
Real Estate. The local MLS (Multiple Listing Service) is web based and for some god aweful reason they think it's a good idea to make the main navigation menu require IE 5.x or better. So if I ever want to see what is on the market or input a listing i need to do so with windows. On top of that our major contact management and scheduling program (www.topproduceronlin.com) requires Windows and Internet Explorer. Tried it on Linux and Apple platforms with no luck. I myself have developed some applications using a universal application like PHP, but I don't have the time to devote to development of solutions expecially when the most important tool I use I have no control over development besides bitching and complaining. I'd say 98% of people in the Real Estate industry know nothing aside from Windows, and those whom do are stuck because of that market share :(