Re: Open source WO (was: Apple, Microsoft, Java and the Web?)

Hello,

> My opinion is that Gavin is right - it ain't gonna happen.  Too much
> intellectual property in that code to open source it,

But why is virtually everyone else able to open-source their
application servers ?

Even if people can (very well) argue that WO is superior, there is a lot
of IP in Sun's and IBM's application servers - and they are open-source.

>probably even
> some patented stuff.  I doubt they could share it if they wanted to.

I don't get the part about patents.

Either it's third-party patents on WO, but then Apple is not needed to
pay royalties (otherwise Xcode wouldn't be free of charge).

In the worst case, they couldn't make these parts open-source.

Or it's Apple patents. I know of open-source (OSI licenses) software
where the orignal  IP owner still retains the associated patents.

Do these reasons come from Apple ? If so, they sound like a smokescreen to me.

Please let me know more in case I miss something here, thanks.

There is an alternative  I didn't mention to be successful without
going open-source:  Apple now indeed works on a major, innovative WO
5.x or 6.0 release.

Which I *highly* doubt given the past years and the fact WO is free as
in beer, ie. no revenue outside  Apple - but then it should go open
source.

No one can predict the future, but I stand by my likely scenario -
given recent news - that WO will languish over time if it is not
open-sourced and superceded by community tools (clones) or
competitors.

In summary: Apple has a lot to loose and few to gain by NOT going
open-source with (at least parts of) WO in the future.

 I like to hear different opinions (my arguments are in the earlier
mails on this thread).

Marc