On Sat, 2 Nov 2002 9:55 am, Charlie Brady wrote: > All I ask is that you respect Mitel's right to do what it chooses to do in > the interest of its customers and shareholders.
I think one of the things that we need to be clear about is that while SME is an open-sourced product, it is not currently an 'openly developed' product. This list is not where the key development decision get made. Perhaps it was once. (I don't know since I've only been involved with SME since it was owned by Mitel.) Regardless of whether I think it is a wise decision by Mitel or not, I respect their commercial right to act as they see fit. There is another Linux based product that I use - Astaro Security Linux. Astaro takes a very similar approach to Mitel. The development of the product is 'closed', but they have a 'ASL Hackers / Beta Version' Forum, which is for beta version feedback and for discussion of non-supported user developed addons. Some of these contributions may (occasionaly) make it back into the core product. As it currently stands, I think this list is essentially here to provide the same functions: a place for feedback on beta versions and the discussion of user developed addons. In this context, the contributions made by Mitel employees should be appreciated for what they are - a gift to the 'SME Hacker community'. That all being said, I think there are things that we, the 'SME Hacker Community' (aka Devinfo) could do to make life better for ourselves. I think we could do with a better system for managing SME contributions (both HOWTO's and RPM's). We could possibly even do with our own website for news and running our own Groupware interface. This could be hosted by someone in the community, or we could use Sourceforge or Savanah (http://savanah.gnu.org). The important thing is that it has to be *our* effort. We cannot demand that Mitel provide anything more than they already do. They provide a great product, with source code. They offer to host user developed contributions for free. They provide a mailing list for discussing ideas. If we want more, then WE need to do it. For example, there is no reason that we (the Devinfo community) could not set up our own bug-tracking system, which would then be available to both us and Mitel. In my view, a publicly accessible bug tracking system (for non-security related bugs) would be a Good Thing(tm). One of the key benefits of open source is the 'many eyeball' effect, but it only works if the bug tracking system is public, since the person who finds a bug is rarely the person who can fix it. The best way to demonstrate this to Mitel would be to do it, and contribute back fixes. Oh, and just to be clear. I'm not in any way suggesting that we 'fork' SME in any way. It is mainly user developed contributions that I have in mind here, not a new version of SME. It is just that if we want utilities to make our life easier, we need to provide them. What do others think?? Rasjid. -- Please report bugs to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] (only) to discuss security issues Support for registered customers and partners to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Searchable archive at http://www.mail-archive.com/devinfo%40lists.e-smith.org
