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Re: [PLUG] Eric Raymond in FastCompany Magazine!
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On Sat, Oct 25, 2003 at 01:16:17PM -0400, Paul wrote:
> This sounds reasonable. However, Cisco could just start a public
> project to attract the voluteer maintainers of the code those two guys
> wrote, and have those maintainers create the new software that Cisco
> requires.
Ah, but that's abusing open source for your own advantage, isn't it?
Open Source is all about sweat equity. Some company (e.g. Cisco) could
make a press release about some s00per-kewl open source project, and
hope that the magic sauce would spontaneously create the software they
need.
That process has no sweat equity, and it has failed over and over again.
It fails daily on sourceforge/freshmeat when some C- or D-grade coder
posts some breathless plan to improve X (or Gnome, or Apache, or ....)
by rewriting it from scratch according to some vague blueprints.
It happens less often when a company tries to create a product it needs
with free labor by releasing code, a press release, or a website.
The situation described earlier in the thread is about Cisco funding a
project it would have funded anyway, and benefitting from releasing the
code.
> I do see that launching a project is less likely if the Company isn't
> willing to continue paying employees to maintain it forever.
Huh? Your double negative here is exceedingly hard to parse...
> So I guess
> open sourcing the project gets you short term benefits at your present
> job, plus public credit which can help you to secure future jobs.
It gets long term benefits, too. The long term benefits exceed the
short term ones in most scenarios, for all parties involved.
It's not all about free labor, or exploiting the workers...
Z.
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