Re: gEDA-user: panel/case design

["Samuel A. Falvo II" <sam.falvo@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 6/15/05, Evan Lavelle <eml-geda@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Well, not quite. First they calculate if it will bring in enough money
> to pay their employees, so that their employees can feed their children,
> and pay their hospital bills and mortages.

This is very true.  But, THEN they calculate what kind of profit
potential is inherent in a bugfix or new feature request.  You might
hear it expressed more politically correct as "Prioritizing" feature
requests.

> This is the basic founding principle of organised groups, and of society
> in general. Free software development, on the other hand, has no such
> organising principle.

That's because open source development isn't organized.

> This activity is essentially selfish: development
> is carried out for personal goals, and to further a nebulous and
> ill-defined concept of the advancement of technology.

Well, it isn't necessarily nebulous, and it isn't necessarily
ill-defined.  But it IS selfish.  Ayn Rand would be proud.

> So, which is more 'humane'? I'll leave that as an exercise for you.

I think they each have their merits, and both have their place.  A lot
of times, it takes a corporation with investment capital to produce a
product and get it half-way decent, even if it is broken when taken as
a whole.  Once it becomes a commodity item (or when people feel it
*should* be a commodity item) then open source takes over, and
provides additional development resources, albeit at the expense of
time.

Just my two cents.

--
Samuel A. Falvo II