Re: Coffee and Open Source

[mike808@users.sourceforge.net]

> > But it's the disconnect between what the minority is willing to create 
(what 
> > meets their interests) and the demand by the majority to meet their 
interests.
> > We just haven't figured out a good mechanism for connecting the two, since
> > the GPL and other OS licenses remove the economic incentive. If money
> > can be considered a "universal translator" to exchange value, and we've
> > no ability (yet) to scale this for open source development, then how does
> > the majority incent the minority to create software to meet their needs?
> 
> I suppose I don't see it.  But, then again, I've been living fairly well
> doing open-source development for several years now. :-)

Let me try another way, you work on what you want as an OS developer.
There's a disconnect there with what the vast masses of folks that have
no intention of ever writing a lick of code want from OS software. i.e.
Kpresenter or Impress being easier and better to use than MS PowerPoint.
Just because a gajillion people want a slick desktop office productivity
suite doesn't infer that *you* will have any interest in creating it.

I'm not discounting the progress we've made in the last years, it's 
unbelievably impressive. But I don't know if the raw numbers of OS developers 
actively contributing has continued to rise, if their quality has gone down.
It could just be that the number of non-contributors has grown so exponentially 
that it just dwarfs the perspective when looking at the OS community size in 
comparison. Not that that's a bad thing, either. Just trying to grok it all.

> ... Linux on the desktop is progressing quite well.

Agreed. And it's getting really close to actually delivering on the hype.

> > BitKeeper can be free and open source, you just can't use it to write
> > other CVSes - e.g. banning Subversion developers from coming near it.
> 
> This is absolutely, positively not true.  BitKeeper is not open source;
> the restriction you just quoted disqualifies BK by itself.

I meant free (as in beer, not Free as in speech), and yes, you can look
at the source code. But if BK gets a whiff of you looking at it to go
tell the Subversion folks what they're doing, they get very upset, and
will likely yank your access/license. Admittedly, it's a *terrible* form of an
"open source" license. Which is why I didn't say "Open Source" (note C12N)
or "Free" as in GPL. So, technically, if it doesn't cost anything
and you (under certain conditions) can see the source code, that makes it
"free" and "open source". As I said, I think they (BK) could do better.

Thanks for the tip on Tom Lord. Looks like I've got some reading to do
over the weekend.

Mike808/


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