Re: OSD && DFSG - different purposes - constructive suggestion!
Glenn Maynard <g_deb@zewt.org> writes:
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 01:37:54PM -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.
>
> I'm not disagreeing with this. I'm saying that your argument (top quote) can
> be applied to open source in general, and we all know it to be false in that
> case; so how are web apps so different?
As I said: existing mechanisms of licensing Free Software (e.g. GNU
GPL and MIT/X11) provide an impetus for improvement. A
compulsory-sharing license, as might bring us closer to BrinWorld,
removes much of the financial incentive for such improvement. In such
a world, the changes made, used, and later released by IBM, Red Hat,
Akamai, Apple... all wouldn't have been made, and our software
technology would be that much more primitive.
-Brian
--
Brian T. Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
http://www.evenmere.org/~bts/
Reply to: