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And yet I see plenty of famous developers who don't contribute to open source at all and it somewhat sickens me (cough Tapbots).
by unknownian 13y ago
And yet I see plenty of famous developers who don't contribute to open source at all and it somewhat sickens me (cough Tapbots).
- minimaxir 13y agoThere's no reason to invoke No True Scotsman here. There are valid justifications for both open-source development (as described in the article) and closed-source development (e.g. IP).
- unknownian 13y ago>There's no reason to invoke No True Scotsman here Where do I do that? >There are valid justifications for both I didn't mean to imply that there wasn't. It's just the smug business-only outlook from some developers I find weird.
- nmi32 13y agoWhy should people have to work for free? I have a skill, I expect to get paid. I don't see my plumber doing pro bono work at the weekend. Not everyone has to adhere to your philosophy. You license your code for me to use, that's your prerogative. Don't complain when people don't give anything back.
- icebraining 13y agoWho said anything about working for free?
- nmi32 13y agoFine, give away my work for free. It's a competitive advantage. If your employer pays you to write open source code, so be it. Most don't; let's face it, Open Source does not lead to a strong business. Proprietary software makes money hand over fist in comparison.
- icebraining 13y agoOf course it does. State protected businesses always do.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoI am not entirely sure what you are getting at. The state protection of open source is only that provided by copyright law to licence a work.
- unknownian 13y ago>Open Source does not lead to a strong business. This is what they want you to believe.
- tjbiddle 13y agoIf a company decides to open source a project that is not directly related to their business, then they are gaining an advantage - now their code can be vetted and improved by the open source community and they can spend less engineering time on the project themselves while they focus on their real business.
- nmi32 13y agoWhere is this magical "open source community" which is eager to examine dull business code? It's a myth. The Debian project shipped a broken PRNG for ages, and that is a popular project.
- tjbiddle 13y agoWho ever said 'dull business code'? Take Twitter Bootstrap for example - It started off just so Twitter could iterate faster on internal applications and not worry so much about styling - Now they've open sourced it and others can contribute. It does nothing to better their business model.
- recursive 13y ago
- roflc0ptic 13y agoTo paraphrase your last paragraph: "If your ideal system allows parasites, you're not entitled to use mechanisms (e.g. social stigma) to control those parasites."? Complaining about parasitic behavior is a form of social control. It actually comes part and parcel with the open source license. If you don't like people talking bad about free loaders, stay away from the open source community.
- nmi32 13y agoI find it amusing when GPL advocates get hurt over a company not contributing. At least people who license with BSD tend to be more pragmatic.
- venomsnake 13y agoCan you give context what is Tapbots and why should they OS/contribute their work?
- perlgeek 13y agoContributions to open source projects are like gifts: you shouldn't take them for granted, and particularly you shouldn't expect them as a baseline.