Re: OSD && DFSG - different purposes - constructive suggestion!
Glenn Maynard <g_deb@zewt.org> writes:
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 11:23:26AM -0500, Brian T. Sniffen wrote:
>> * There's less incentive to develop new changes: unless you can afford
>> a stable of developers large enough to deploy new features faster
>> than your competitors can copy them, you gain no competitive
>> advantage from innovation. Software gets developed only to scratch
>> personal itches.
>
> This sure sounds like a (poor) argument against open source in general.
Not at all. Open-source is great for infrastructure software --
Linux, Apache, Emacs. Many companies have private modifications to
Linux or Apache which they use internally; some of these get released,
some don't. Everybody benefits by contributing to the common good.
For example, several network infrastructure companies use Linux on
their embedded devices, release kernel changes and improvements, and
keep their core technology in-house. It's not that it's under a
proprietary license, just that it's not distributed at all. This
model works wonderfully for the free software community and for those
companies.
-Brian
--
Brian T. Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/
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