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On Sat, 21 Jun 2003 15:03:19 -0400 Scott Robert Ladd <coyote@coyotegulch.com> wrote: > Stephan von Krawczynski wrote: > > GPL has an inherent long-term strategy, you are talking of short-term, > > Larry. That does not match. If I am using only GPL-software I know I am > > able to use it as is in five years from now. If I depend on being nice to > > commercial companies, it may well turn out, that they are not being nice to > > me no matter what I do. > > A very technocratic view, to be sure. Source code is no guranatee of > future portability or viability; for the vast, vast majority of users -- > we do care about those, don't we? -- source code is useless. I doubt that. You are probably right with your exact statement, meaning that the _user_ cannot make use of the available source code himself (though the only reason why is that he plays user and refuses to learn anything :-) , BUT: the manpower and brain invested in creation of this open source code is not lost in space. Someone with brain and time can pick it up and revive it at any given time. And this is a very big advantage in comparison to closed source which simply vanishes with its producing company - and there already have been quite a few of those. So even if your statement looks correct in micro-economics, it is completely wrong in macro-economics. As Larry already pointed out in another post software development is often expensive. But it is only expensive if every company has to re-invent the wheel. If you can simply use the wheel and go on producing a car "on top" of it, you _saved_ money, time and manpower. So from that point of view, no piece of crappy software ever written is useless, as long as its source is _open_. Because I think based on todays' knowledge you simply do not know which software is really the "wheel" and which is pure nonsense. Only time can tell. Regards, Stephan - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ | ||||||||||||
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