On Wednesday 31 Dec 2008 12:56:17 pm Praveen A wrote: > 2008/12/30 Kenneth Gonsalves <[email protected]>: > > none of these 'definitions' define FOSS. They just lay down the criteria > > that *must* be fulfilled for a project to be considered FOSS. Minimum > > criteria. > > So are you telling that Virtual Box, QT, Open Office, MySQL fails this > minimum criteria?
they dont fail this minimum criteria > > > But FOSS is something much more than that. To different people it is an > > ideology, a methodology, a religion and even, surprise, surprise, a mass > > movement. I am a methodology guy and hence focus on that - and I have no > > plans of changing the nomenclature. To me, FOSS methodology (or the FOSS > > development model) is the most important aspect. License is a minor > > aspect. > > OK. No problems with that. But just look at the example of Open > Office. Sun distributes proprietary Star Office and ownership of any > contribution to Open Office must be shared with Sun. Now some people > did not want to do that and there is http://go-oo.org/ > > Where do you stand with respect to Open Office? I feel it sucks big time - it is an attempt to outdo M$ office, run by a big corporation where probably (I say probably) design decisions are not being taken by the core developers. Since ownership of all contributions have to be shared with Sun, this automatically cuts down the number of potential contributors and probably fully cuts out casual contributors. In my opinion, it *is* foss - but just barely and a good example of how not to do FOSS. This is in addition to my objection to office suites in general which in my opinion is equivalent to employing elephants to transport toothpicks. > > License is th enabler for the development methodology. If you don't > like the model fork. That is what happened with Open Office, > Sourceforge (gforge) ... > > > And the extent to which the FOSS development model is used is usually > > directly proportional to the quality of the software and its > > responsiveness to the needs of the users - and I personally use FOSS > > software because of it's quality and its responsiveness to the needs of > > the users. And as far as possible keep away from dual licensed stuff and > > other stuff of dubious provenance. > > Are you telling Open Office, QT, MySQL are of lower quality because > they are under dual license? I do not know about QT, but both Open Office and MySQL are of lower quality and I feel that it is largely due to the dual license policy which to a large extent shuts out community involvement in the development process and in decision making. Just compare postgres and mysql and you will see the difference. -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/ -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
