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"Commercial open-source" will always be oxymoronic to me, despite all the kumbaya naysayers. There's a basic law of nature at work here which US patent law and
by jimmyvalmer 5y ago
"Commercial open-source" will always be oxymoronic to me, despite all
the kumbaya naysayers. There's a basic law of nature at work here which
US patent law and a fictional character ("if you're good at something,
never do it for free") understood. To a programmer, opening the source
essentially renders the product gratis, some custom integration work
notwithstanding.
- azeirah 5y agoYeah I get that, and I think that's the primary reason it's difficult to do well. I think there _are_ ways to do it right. For instance, open-sourcing a Windows application is not necessarily problematic if 99.9% of your user base has never ever compiled something from source. Heck, my father is the kind of person who doesn't know the difference between "Windows" and "gmail". He has purchased software for his business once, it would've made no difference to him whether it was open-source or not. Despite my believing that it's possible, I can't really think of any examples other than redhat and Qt from the top of my head...
- jimmyvalmer 5y ago> open-sourcing a Windows application is not necessarily problematic if > 99.9% of your user base has never ever compiled something from source. What a fatuous remark. I publish the Coca-Cola recipe to Pepsi drinkers. I'm fairly sure the recipe will eventually get around to a home brewer who's sick of paying the Coca-Cola company for its product.