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* For better or worse, real customers will stick with the "original brand". * The fork won't get any of the community support the original did, and will a
by joeyo 18y ago
* For better or worse, real customers will stick with the
"original brand".
* The fork won't get any of the community support the
original did, and will always be out of sync.
* Whatever community forms around the original project
will angrily reject the fork.
I don't believe this is always true--usually the superior* fork wins out. Take Firefox or xorg. Both of them effectively replaced the projects from which they came.
* Where superior here means technically, or aesthetically or friendlier to contributers or whatever.
- tptacek 18y agoGot an example where a commercial product usurped another commercial product's open source project?
- critic 18y agoFew commercial projects will open source their code, unless they already have reasons to believe that they can't be usurped for one reason or another.
- yason 18y agoOn a market a single law applies: the product that is better marketed wins out. Eventhough I'd love to see it otherwise, any aesthetical or technical superiority would need to come in enormous figures to even challenge the position of the market leader. For a unsurprising and worn example, look at Microsoft. On the other hand, if some company takes your code and does better both in marketing and technical aspects, you _should_ lose! The better product is better for everyone in the developer/user base, including you. The community and users don't lose anything -- instead they gain! You do gain as well because you can incorporate the other company's changes back to your own codebase -- of course you did license the software under GPL.