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Open Source Community's Double Standard
AlexGr writes to point out a really good point Matt Asay raises in his CNET News Blog: Why do we praise closed source companies who open up a little bit, but damn open source companies who close down a little bit? "Deja vu. Remember 2002? That's when Red Hat decided to split its code into Red Hat Advanced Server (now Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and Fedora. Howls of protest and endless hand-wringing ensued: How dare Red Hat not give everything away for free? Enter 2007. MySQL decides to comply with the GNU General Public License and only give its tested, certified Enterprise code to those who pay for the service underlying that code (gasp!). Immediately cries of protest are raised, How dare MySQL not give everything away for free?"
Well put! (Note to self, lower others expectations of me...)
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
It's double penetration.
The open source community wants to penetrate throug the business worlds, and throught the personal world. This is why the open source community has adopted a double penetration strategy.
We can only hope that the double penetration strategy is successful.
But, you see, if you phrase it this way, using clear logic, then the story is boooooorrrriiingggg - "Open Source Advocates: We like openness!" *yawn* "OSS Users dislike moves away from closed source, like moves towards open source" - *zzzzzz* Where's the conflict? where's the excitement? You can't have "fair and balanced" reporting unless there's a conflict!!
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Wouldn't that be cheating? I bet you're the kind of guy who reads the instruction manual before putting the widget together.