On Tue, 13 May 2003, Martin van den Bemt wrote:
I just mailed him that he shouldn't waste my time.. What a major idiot..
That is a bit rash I think. The guy makes a valid point; and one which resonates unbelivably well with managers, policy makers, politicians and lobbyist.
And there is a warped, but tempting/contagious, stink in his key argument:
No BSD code can compete with Proprietary code based on BSD code.
As it is BSD and then some. And therefore better. In reality this does not playout that well (due to maintenance, integration and other biz./reality costs) But once you have to explain that - you've lost the oneline argument/debate. And the above sticks terribly well with people who are not that familiar with actual software engineering processes.
True. But still a wrong oneliner. We can debunk it with another oneliner/simplification:
Is Netscape 7 more popular than Mozilla?
I don't think so. Most of the times, community evolution will prevent Propietary+BSD/Apache/Mozilla code keeping pace. There are windows of opportunity, but they close fast.
Much like when a Spanish writer in last century could read English and imitated the works of a true original English novelist (or the other way round, no cultural preference expressed). It is matter of time and communication until people notices something going wrong and go for the original. And we are getting plenty of communication those days :-)
Still, translation of works does add value (I mean here for software vertical markets or different environments), as do illustrated editions, commented works, etc. for literary works.
For all these kinds of "mob/darwinistic software"[1], GPL licenses get on the way, forcing you to think and take care about how the software could be used in the future, while Apache, BSD or Artistic licenses make the hacker-painter-writer[2] wholy free (not like in free beer, but like in free thinking). ;-)
[1]: http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/6/ [2]: http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html
(This will be copied verbatim in my English Blog, as soon as I manage to set it up using Stefano's stuff ;-)
-- Santiago Gala High Sierra Technology, S.L. (http://hisitech.com) http://memojo.com?page=SantiagoGalaBlog
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
