Examining Some Open Source Myths

Neil Gunton writes "I wrote an article distilling some thoughts on Open Source myths. Perhaps unusually, these are not myths propogated by the anti-OSS crowd, but rather dogma that is more frequently spouted by OSS proponents. It is not intended as an anti-OSS argument, but really more as observations and reactions to specific things people say without really thinking about it, such as 'You shouldn't complain about it if you don't want to put effort into providing a fix', 'OSS lets you get under the hood to fix problems', 'All software should be free', 'Scratching the personal itch', etc."

Comments

Uh huh.

[rcs1000]

Did you notice?

The article, right at the very top, said (c).

They guy should just have gone right out at the start and said "I am in Microsoft's pocket, Bill Gates Rocks." How dare he write a piece about open source, and then make that piece closed source.

Information MUST BE FREE. Open it up. Publish yur article under the GPL. Allow others to edit it, improve it develop it.

Ask yourself, would you rather be the author of one little closed source essay, or would you rather your essay grew (like Linux) to be a Shakespeare of literature? You might have created the next Macbeth.

But no; you chose the shallow, short-sighted route of copyright and closed source.

I despair.

greedy author?

[fcauvin]

I'm laughing when I read this:

why can't I write a wonderful new *general* tool and make money from it? Yeah, I know, some will say "Go ahead and try, it's a free world". But you know as well as I do that if I am successful then inevitably some kid in his parents' basement will write his own Open Source version of the thing, for free.

Aren't you too greedy? If a kid with a computer can make it too, then why would YOU deserve to make a lot of money?
At least, in this quote, the author really uses the word free (in free world) with the same meaning than in free software ;)