Justin Findlay wrote:
On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Richard Todd Carlson wrote:
*pop* (that was the sound of a can of worms being opened)
So given the benefits of OSS, is it unethical to produced closed source software?
Here's my take on it -- developing closed source software, versus open source:
I love tinkering with programming, figuring how to make things work, and *really* enjoy learning new things. Having other people's code open to me to not only look at it provides me with not just examples of how to code something similar, but also a look into different coding styles and principles.
With that in mind, I create a program, and it was a lot of fun to make and I enjoyed the development. I release the code, and leave it to the community to do what with will, while I move onto something else.
I keep learning to develop new programs as new opportunities arise, learning from my experience in the past, relying on my programs of the past and other open-source projects to help me figure out problems as I plug along. At the same time, everything I learn is at the very least documented in my code, which at some point is given back to the community freely so that they can benefit from my sweat and tears. Sure, I may make a few measly bucks going this route, but what's important is that I'm providing for myself and enjoying my job.
And using open-source apps in work is great as well.
If I need a program to solve a solution, with open-source I generally have a few options that I'm allowed to try before I decide, and implement in part of completion to see how well it applies. With a commercial application, I'm limited much more in my testing abilities. I have to rely on a demo, screenshots, customer comments, and so on. And if I do end up buying a program to solve my problem, I'm out that money, whether it works for me or not. If it doesn't work for me exactly how I wanted to, I either have the option of kludging it into submission to do my tasks, or start searching for an option that works again.
Another great bonus is that it adds to my list of skills having become experienced with implementing an open-source application. The same is true with commercial apps as well, but the advantage in selling someone else on it in the future, is that it's also free and/or free.
The opposite side of this whole scenario is building programs with a profit-only approach. I tend to think that this naturally breeds a lack of caring for the actual project, as I tend to do my work solely to get paid, instead of having a backend agenda to help out the community with my development. I'm driven to succeed because I need to get paid, and then I need to protect my investment. Not only am I sweating and stressing now, but already I'm putting a lot into my future that I'll have to continue to support it with promotion, and protect it from piracy. Plus, the only guarantee that I can give people that my program is what they want is my word only, which is obviously biased from a marketing perspective. In the end, it's all for me, and ends up only for me, and if the program is unused, does badly, then it's lost to the world, and I sit at home with no job, alone with my satisfaction that nobody can have the source code but me.
My commercial perspective on the matter may be a little harsh, but I think it's pretty obvious that any company working solely for-profit cannot at the same time proactively care about their customers, as they say they do. At the least, I think it would take little effort for any corporation to passively be active by releasing their source code of defunct, unused, or otherwise applications to the community so that they can then do what they want with it, after everyone's made their share of the pie off of it. Pride be damned.
Don't get me wrong. It's good to have a job that pays, but using open source is just a great idea for all the great reasons we already know about. If I can implement a program into the workspace that's free, then I save time for me, money for my company, and impress my boss in that I can get stuff done faster that way .. and I get to move onto other areas of innovation. It just makes things more effective and fun. :)
Steve
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