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Open Source Community's Double Standard

Posted by kdawson on from the wax-fecund-and-celebrate dept.

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?"

2 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Human Nature by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They didn't write it.

    It's not the product of their mind, not the product of their efforts.

    It's the product of many peoples minds and efforts.

    The administrators of the projects should be appreciative of that fact.

    It is not their property. Laws can say what they want, lawyers and contracts and twisting of justice aside, it simply isn't theirs.

    When open source organizations try to close access and extract money from people, they become malignant, corrupt, thieving organizations.

    Declaring that it's legal for someone to do this doesn't change the fundamental nature of what's going on.

    The misplaced sense of entitlement these organizations display is truly disgusting.

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  2. Re:Human Nature by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just wanted to add to that last post...

    Organizations have a lot of inerta. It takes a concerted effort to restructure.

    When a closed source organization starts becoming more open, it took a lot of hard work and restructuring to make it possible.

    When an open source organization starts closing things up, it takes a lot of hard work and restructuring to make that possible too.

    Which means the people at the helm are working hard to start hoarding things they were given in trust for the public good.

    It reveals that the organization has a poor moral character.

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth