Nicola Musatti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ... > > >Ah, the closed source days! Back then you could just buy the company > > >and be done with it. Now you have to chase developers one by one all > > >over the world... ;-) > > . > > You propellor-heads (I write that in all fondness, Nicola) are > > all laughing, but I'm certain that the right elaboration of > > that proposition could make it into the *Harvard Business Review* > > (or *IBM Systems Journal*, which seems to have tilted irreversibly > > in that direction). > > I was only half joking, actually. Compare Python to Delphi. If a > company wanted to acquire control over Delphi, they'd try and buy > Borland; to acquire control over Python what are they to do? Well, > hiring Guido and Alex is probably a step in the right direction ;-) but > would it be enough? Programming languages are not the best example, but > if you change it to Mozilla and Opera my argument makes more sense.
Not a bad point at all, although perhaps not entirely congruent to open source: hiring key developers has always been a possibility (net of non-compete agreements, but I'm told California doesn't like those). E.g., Microsoft chose to hire Anders Hejlsberg away from Borland (to develop J++, the WFC, and later C# and other key parts of dotNet) rather than buying Borland and adapting Delphi; while acquiring companies is often also a possibility (e.g., Novell chose to buy SuSE GmbH, rather than trying to hire specific people off it, despite SuSE's roots in open source and free software). Alex -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
