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Why should you invest company resource on FOSS that could be used against you? According to Joel, because the project complements your commercial product: http
by rjurney 18y ago
Why should you invest company resource on FOSS that could be used against you? According to Joel, because the project complements your commercial product: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html
- rbanffy 18y agoWhile the strategy to commoditize your product's complements is clever, doing so can be dangerous if you use a license that allows your competitors to take your work and run against you. When doing so, one should be careful to use licenses that can't be turned against _you_. All MIT/BSD licenses can. All *GPLs, MPLs can't. The choice is clear. From the projects he mentioned: IBM (Linux): GPL Netscape/Mozilla (Mozilla/Gecko): MPL Transmeta (Linux): GPL Sun/HP (Gnome): GPL There is a pattern to be seen: GPL licenses create vigorous diverse communities around them more easily than BSD-styled licenses.