Re: Discussing issues

On Mon, 21 Apr 2003, Alan Cox wrote:

>> http://www.jurisdictionary.com/dictionary/dictionary%20v.htm (legal)
>> 
>> What do we mean by it?
>
>My dictionary says
>
>" In general, the term indicates an interest that clouds objectivity or
>  that would create a bias for personal, perhaps hidden, gain. For example,
>  an investor in an enterprise that supplies his company with services would
>  have a vested interest in seeing to it that other bidders could not
>  effectively compete for the business."
>
>And what I mean by my comment is slightly different. XFree86 consists of
>a lot of people who are working on XFree86 for their own personal gain,
>for the gain of their company, or for other similar reasons, not just out
>of random charity. XFree86 works rather better for that I suspect than if
>it didn't.
>
>I happen to very happy the Tungsten guys get paid for XFree86

I agree with your assessment on all counts also.  It's not much
different from the range of developers working on the kernel,
GNOME, KDE, and other stuff.  The involvement of individuals
being paid to work on stuff benefits the various open source
projects out there much more than if there wasn't any commercial 
interests funding development and paying developers to work on 
stuff.

I'm of the belief the term "vested interest" is becoming quickly 
overloaded as of late, and is becoming a candidate for the Lake 
Superior State University "banished words" list.  ;o)

http://www.lssu.edu/banished

;o)


-- 
Mike A. Harris