On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 12:31:04PM +0530, Sachin Nair wrote:
Believe me, this is the last thing that a newbie to the "philosophical debate" should see ... ;)
About the movement, from what I've read about it, is it just about software or is one trying to make a point about the society in general too?
It is difficult to be very precise about these two issues, but in a loose sense, the former topic of "just software" is what the Open Source movement talks about while the later topic of society in general is what the Free Software movement is all about. Here are some good references to see either side:
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/
http://www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html
A few good hints, about ESR's idea of Open Source and how it contrasts with Free Software, are also found at end of the following chapter in his new book, TAUP in the sections titled "Linux and the Pragmatist Reaction: 1991-1998" and "The Open-Source Movement: 1998 and Onward"
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/historychapter.html
I know am still not being exactly articulate, but the whole issue can be sometimes confusing to a person standing on the pavement wondering whether to jump in or not! ...read me!!!
I would say, worry about the philosophy part only when you have the time to. If by jumping in, you mean using FLOSS on your setup, go right ahead and give it a try; what have you got to lose? I am sure you'll be hooked in no time ;)
While free software might make business sense, the idea propagated by opensource.org IMHO is not really likely to succeed.
Errr ... its actually the other way round. Free Software scares the hell out of businesspeople (marketroids) because they don't like being lectured on idealogies. Open Source, instead, makes perfect business sense, although its the same wine in a different bottle.
How many people can make money by releasing the source code? Software develops faster, true!, software also develops better, true! But does it make business sense?
Depends on what business you are in. If you plan to make money by selling software that you wrote, go ahead and do that - its your choice. That's the only kind of business that cannot afford to release source code. But most Indian companies work in the service industry ... they rarely release branded products!
In either case, remember that the customer is the king, and no matter whether you want to release your code or not, there are others who will - and your customers just might decide to go to them!
by opening it's own source? :/. Why would any other business house want to ask the parent company for support when they can have 2 software geeks inhouse to provide support for the project on their own?
Its easy to say that, but difficult to implement ... relying on a company that's providing service usually turns out to be far cheaper than doing it yourself. Remember the suit buzzword "outsourcing"? If the customer has access to the source code they run, they have more freedom to choose their support system. This would be true even if they used a custom built software that's used only in their company!
Redhat began the fedora project in the hope that worldwide developers will have a hand for it to succeed. But what percentage of coders whom you know, work for pleasure while they need to put food on the table?
Download any big software like the kernel, apache, gcc etc. Grep for all the copyright notices. That should answer your question.
I don't intend to start any holy war which has been fought countless times already. Am just a guy asking questions... just out of curiosity ..
No problem at all! Feel free to fire away!
Sameer.