Re: Liberal corporate open source policies

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 02:40:31PM -0700, Keith Curtis wrote:
> I recommend separating things out into using free software versus
> writing free software.

They're intimately tied, aren't they?

One of the great freedoms of open source software is the ability to modify it
-- whether that means a sysadmin hacking a broken installer until it works, a
developer monkey-patching a Ruby module, or what have you.  If you could read
OSS but not modify it, it would be a lot less powerful.  Using OSS becomes
writing OSS almost right away.

> So I suggest keeping those separate aspects in consideration.
> Convincing people to depend on Linux, Python, etc. (and giving back
> any bug / fixes to existing public codebases) is a relatively easy
> step and moves things in the right direction.

It does seem like the policy should start with usage and progress through
mailing list participation, minor contributions such as bugfixes, to ongoing
development of major features.

Marvin Humphrey