Re: gEDA-user: Portable gEDA for Windows

[Vanessa Ezekowitz <vanessaezekowitz@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:20:54 +0900
timecop <timecop@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> And this, friends, is why people just say fuckit and stop contributing.
> Enjoy your GPL circlejerk.

THIS is why so many of us on the open source side of the fence get so upset at folks on the closed source side.

People stop contributing and just say "fuck it" when the manager of project, whatever its purpose, whether open or closed source, stops accepting bug reports, patches, comments, etc. and starts doing whatever he or she wants to with that software.  That certainly doesn't seem to be the case with the gEDA project, or this list wouldn't exist, by definition.

Each person has their own reasons why will not contribute to a project, whatever that project's purpose, and each author has their own reasons why they choose one license over another.  If you don't like a project or its license, that is your right, but do not presume to speak for *anyone* else but yourself.

As long as you're going to take pot shots at how we choose to manage our licensing and contributing mechanisms, I must point this out:  In the closed source world, software companies and even many of the smaller authors generally have at least one or two of these things to deal with: 

* Software patents.  Ignoring for the moment that these should not exist at all, some commercial software companies have tens of thousands of patents.
* Negotiated and signed license agreements spanning many pages, just so that one author can borrow some code from another author's product.
* End User License Agreements so complex that no one short of an attorney can understand them, let alone the end user who is expected to click "I Agree" just so they can get on with what they wanted to do.
* Illegal distribution of (unmodified) copies of commercial software.
* One or more lawyers on hand ready to sue because of one or another asinine reason... broken software, violation of one of the above, DMCA claims.
* Vendor lock-in.
* Critical bugs which the author/company refuses to fix, on the grounds that the next version will be better anyway.  In commercial software, this of course means more money out of the user's pocket to pay for the upgrade.

Perhaps you'll notice how these things just don't exist in significant numbers in the open source world, despite having about as many software applications as the closed source world.

When something like this does become a problem, we try to *fix* it, usually for free (as the end user sees it anyway).

I decline to mention things that are specific to the OS that is usually associated with the closed-source world, since those things could also affect an otherwise purely open-source system built on that OS.

-- 
"There are some things in life worth obsessing over.  Most
things aren't, and when you learn that, life improves."
http://starbase.globalpc.net/~ezekowitz
Vanessa Ezekowitz <vanessaezekowitz@xxxxxxxxx>


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