snip...
On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 12:57 AM, Debayan Banerjee debayanin@gmail.comwrote:
Do you not realise that if the govt adopts foss, they are dependant on westerners who have developed it?
I dont understand. If government uses MySql are they dependent on that specific company to maintain and develop bits? The point is any home-grown startup can help the govt out then. Right? And the bigger cause is that MySql is developed on open standards etc so a company like ORACLE does not push their own special formats through our arteries.
As per my understanding of FOSS, i may take and modify the source code and make my own localized software, as a developer I may give it back to the community. However, for the original software, I still have to go back to the parent company. Localizations given back to the community (third party) needs to be ported to the new update. If not, then either donot update to latest version and/or make a new build.
So, IMHO yes we are dependent on the company and community responsible for maintaining the software to make sure there are no vulnerabilties. Here, we just build on top of the existing software and keep it to ourself and when an update comes in either ignore it or start a new porting
Cyril Chacko