[geeks] And The Linux Weenies Wonder Why They Aren't Mainstream...`

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Tue, Feb 28, 2006 at 05:27:16PM -0600, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:

> Because this mindset is pervasive throughout so many of the open-source
> projects that grew up on Linux.  All the world's an i386 running Linux,
> every compiler is GCC, and if it works on the developer's box and not on
> yours, -you- should fix it.  And if it doesn't so what you want, you
> have the source; why not change it?

I'll give you an example. There is one program that is popular that IMHO
is one of the worst designed, poorly tested, overblown programs. But it is
popular. It is from a company destined to failure.

They released their program under the GPL. Most of the development of it
was and still is done by volunteers who are not related to the company. 
They added code which is "owned" by them and covered by the GPL.

The company sold proprietary source licenses to several large companies.

IMHO this is a violation of the GPL, if not in words, in spirit. Several
of the developers have quit the project in disgust. Meanwhile the company,
which is privately held, has been reported to have made $10m last year.

Another company raised $5m in venture capital to create and add-on for
it. 

Eventualy someone is going to notice that they made big bucks selling code
that was added to a GPL program. If they had wanted to sell the code, there
are lots of "artistic" licenses they could have chosen, but the code
added is under the GPL and cannot be legaly sold. 

At some point someone is going to sue them and the big companies that bought
source code licenses. My expectation is that they will disapear in a cloud
of legal fess.

As I've said in my blog, I am trying to convince people to start a company
to develop a complementry program that does the same thing, but is closed
source. The main features of it besides being compatible in many features,
is that it would be designed from the ground up to be effiecent. The programers
would be paid fairly for their work instead of exploited and a large QA
staff would check each released version, patch, etc. before the public
saw it.

So far, no takers. I've spoken to the "lights" of the industry, but everyone
wants to stay with the open source program. Good luck to them I say.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667  IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 
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