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Open Source Advocacy [was Re: [OT] Oreilly Books Online - Opensource]



On Fri, 13 Jul 2001, Gabor Szabo wrote:

> Talking about Open Source,
>
> > "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution". (see
> > http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/toc.html
>
> does this or any other book/article explains why people write Open
> Source and how Open Source can fit in the development of a company ?
> (Development and just the syetem, I don't mean using OS as tools
> but how and why should a company use Perl for example to develop
> its main product ?)
>

It does try to explain this, but there are other books similar to that.
Try the books section of Slashdot (not a superb idea because of low
Signal to Noise Ratio) or search for them in Google or in Amazon (not a
p.c. idea) or wherever.

> I'd like to read about it as even though I have a few reasons why
> to use Open Source as tools but I still feel that I am not convinced
> about using it for development.
>

My own personal ideology is that the open-source software that is
available now has some very great offerings. I use it and have also
contributed some things of my own. However, I do not think that there's
nothing wrong or illigitimate with properiatary software, and I don't have
"Neqifoth Matzpun" when using it. Some properiatary software is still
better or more complete than its O-S counterparts. And if I can afford to
pay for it, I may buy it. (I don't use pirated software)

Most O-S developers make their living by developing propriatary software
and we cannot escape this fact. It is possible that in the future, most
software houses will release their products as O-S, and make money out of
support, documentation or other related stuff. Then again, it is possible
that non-free software is here to stay in one form or the other. I'd
rather see what is going to happen in the future than start making wild
predictions now.

Distributing your software has its advantages and disadvantages. Most
companies do not do so, because they'd like to earn money from selling the
software per-ce. Some companies take an approach of distributing their
software under the GPL or a similar license, and selling propriatary
licenses to it. This approach makes sense for libraries, but not much for
whole applications, because the GPL allows using a software to manipulate
properiatary data.

Just my 20 agoroth.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish








> -- Gabor
>
>
> --
> Gabor Szabo
> http://www.tracert.com/
>
>
>
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        shlomif@t2.technion.ac.il
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/
Home E-mail:       shlomif@techie.com

A more experienced programmer does not make less bugs. He just realizes
what went wrong more quickly.


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