[wplug] Thanks for the book recommendation

[Tim Lesher]

On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 11:42:54AM -0400, Teodorski, Chris wrote:

> I'm back from vacation, after spending some quality time with the
> book Free Software, Free Society; I would like to thank those who
> recommended this book to me.  It has provided me with an interesting
> insight into the history and ideals behind the free software
> movement.  I am curious about one thing though; I find it
> interesting that Stallman seems to have significantly different
> ideals than those in the Open Source movement.  I was wondering what
> the consensus is amongst the WPLUG, Free Software vs. Open Source.

My personal view (and I'm definitely not speaking for my employer
here!) is Free when you can, then Open when you can, then Closed when
you must.

There are definitely times when Free Software works: namely, when the
software (and by this I mean the coding, the marketing, the support,
the testing, and the documentation) can either be developed by unpaid
programmers (like Zinf does) or else can be funded by a separate
revenue source (like RedHat and IBM do).  

Failing that, the next best thing is when you can dual-license the
software, such that anyone who is willing to play by the terms of the
GPL can use that license, but for those who aren't able or willing to
provide source, you license on a fee basis (like MySQL).  

But there are definitely cases where neither of these are true (for
example, standalone, non-subscription based games that require more
than a few staffers, or software that contains very sensitive data);
in those cases, I haven't found an alternative to closed-source
licensing.

I currently work for a hardware manufacturer, writing software to
manage their hardware.  Everything we put out is closed source,
although we do use some open-source software in creating it.  I'd
rather it be Free, but the cultural climate here isn't ready for it.

-- 
Tim Lesher <tim at lesher.ws>
http://www.lesher.ws