Thread: what has "open source" and "linux" phone/tablet maemo os brought us?
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wmarone is offline wmarone
2010-06-08 , 04:58
Posts: 1,746 | Thanked: 2,100 times | Joined on Sep 2009
#98
Originally Posted by mmurfin87 View Post
In this instance I do understand fully the philosophical and practical natures that the GPLs embody. I don't agree with it. It certainly has lots of good points, but also lots of stupidity.

I guess I should delineate what I meant.
Certainly hope so.

The best software is unarguably made by organized person(s).
Of course, nothing good really comes from chaos.

The best open source projects are organized.
Yes, organized projects tend to work well.

The very best ones are companies.
Unfounded statement. Corporations can and do churn out utter crap. Sometimes they get away with charging millions for it.

Once they become companies, while they are still certainly driven by the communities, the real innovation comes from those directly involved with the company, and not the random "spare-time" coders.
When you're paid to work on things, yes, lots more focus can be paid to a project. This is why the Linux Foundation exists and why things like MeeGo, the Linux Kernel, and other efforts are being started under it.

Certainly those spare-timers might contribute a lot in a lot of different ways, and may be the lifeblood of those projects. Ultimately though, the "open-source"ness of those projects is different from the "open-source"ness of projects that are done by groups of people who just do it in their spare time.
Not necessarily. Many very, very open projects have full time coders yet are still extremely open. Lots of people are driving many major open source projects both with spare time coders and full time, dedicated people working on them. There is no problem with this, and extensive openness is retained for all users.

I find no use for people who produce bad code in their spare time and pronounce it holier than Microsoft simply because its open source.
Well those people often tend to be wrong. But they have no bearing on the overall situation though.

I do not believe you delineated what you hate about the GPL, which makes me wonder if you understand what the GPL means as a license, or if you're simply reacting to something without fully understanding it.