Re: GPLv3, was: Copying off Time Machine?

Am 04.10.2012 um 08:35 schrieb William H. Magill:

> The Open Source Community has shot its wad. Their day is over. Unix  
> and its derivative Linux are dead meat. I was watching them die  
> before I retired.
> BSD ended in 1995.  Linus divorced himself from attempts by  
> Stallman to call LInux ... GNU/Linux,  in the late 1990s.
>
> Were it not for the direct support of Corporate entities, including  
> Apple and Microsoft, the Open Source folks would have no budgets.

Undoubtly there are different recognitions of what "open source" is.  
Some consider it to be everything with source code available, even if  
contributions are ignored. Others expect open source to come with  
some sort of community, making community based development possible.  
Still others wish open source to be free of commercial interests,  
which apparently matches your recognition.

While the latter is indeed dying, commercially funded open source  
appears to be pretty healthy. It's some mix of "the community will  
fix the bugs" and open source as a marketing tool. Making source code  
available has currently a surprisingly high effect on good  
reputation, for whatever reason. Also, in some low budget areas being  
open source is almost mandatory for becoming widespread.

Along with this shift to commercial interests apparently many people  
have shifted their recognition of open source from "... where you can  
contribute" to "... where somebody else fulfills your wishes for  
free". Maybe this is sad, but it's what I see these days.

Accordingly, open source contributions apruptly stop when more than  
trivial changes are required. As far as I can see, groundbreaking  
open sourced contributions all come from commercial entities these days.


That said, if you could outline a open source model which is free of  
direct commercial interests and might still work, I'm all ears.  
Seriously.


Markus

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Dipl. Ing. (FH) Markus Hitter
http://www.jump-ing.de/