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Re: Sunday, August 18, 2002
On the last point, I suppose plagarism is no less prosecutable than anything else. We are a prosecutorial as well as litigious people. As for maintaining control of source code while leaving it open, yes, that's quite possible (Apple, Sun, Real and many others are doing that with core products). But generally companies are doing this with foundational code, not with the commercial code they build on top of it. The serious questions Dave keeps raising are commercial and creative: How much more can you charge for closed bits than for open ones?; and How much creative software would never get written if there were no money to be made with it? The answer to the both is apparently a lot. This is why surviving "open source companies" like Caldera, VA Software and CollabNet have been selling closed as well as open source software, and helping their customers do the same. Out in the real world marketplace, it's not a black-or-white issue. This is why making laws to force one or the other are so misguided. Dave once said open and closed source are best seen like hot and cold running water. You need to be able to mix the two. I haven't run across a better metaphor than that. I think it's still early in this thing. I've said before that the software industry when it matures will be much more like the construction industry than the manufacturing-like industry it resembles today. But let's cut it some slack: we've been building with bits for only a few decades, and with rocks and wood for thousands of years. What matters most right now (to me, at least) is that we keep the Net free. On that issue Dave and Larry are on the same side. There are responses to this message:
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