Re: Why no Opera?
On Sunday 09 September 2007 20:11:26 Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 18:19:28 +0100, David Given <dg@cowlark.com> said:
[...]
> > I'd suggest that because it strongly benefits us if Opera continues to
> > listen to our suggestions, it would not be a good idea not to attempt
> > to throw our weight around --- we don't have any...
>
> I think Opera, being closed source, harms us as a community, so
> I also take exception to this remark.
* You may have a point since
+ a browser is perceived as core IT infrastructure which should remain free
+ we are investing our time in threads like this one
* but it may pay well of for us since
+ Firefox developers should all know what to compete against, free closed
source programs are a means to communicate concepts and benchmarks between
developers
+ Large close source products are all likely to feature some bits that may
be open sourced. A company may hence decide to dissect its application into
money making closed source bits and such that it may profit from by sharing
their seed development with the community. Such a decision, from which the
community I feel certain to profit, are certainly made more easily made when
having some contacts with the community already. And Debian can be very proud
of its community. Quite a number of IT managers out there may be interested
in getting their developers in contact with us to ease the cross-platform
compatibility of their developments, receive patches or to passively educate
their developers in some way or for some extra motivation or .... donno.
+ Debian gets quite some promotion and acceptance with every commercial
product that is supported for it. This will not only attract more users but
also more developers.
I admit. Very deeply in me I wished that Opera would find a way to make the
same (or even more) money with an open source product of theirs. And I'd also
wished that the closed source products more deeply associated with Debian are
further away from the IT core infrastructure. I personally see this thread
and what might follow as a trial baloon. If there are such baloons with
Debian logos are floating around already then a Wiki page gathering these
should be of our benefit.
Cheers,
Steffen
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