Someday it will be the definition of "citizenship."
you read it here first.
Open source is communism in an application. I can count on one hand the open source projects that are worth anything, the rest are pos. I vehemently oppose any open source stuff embedded into our applications.
The idea of open source was originally as a thumb of the nose at software makers like Microsoft who don’t release their source code. It made the community responsible for the content of the distributions.
If someone takes OSS, modifies it to their needs, and makes money off of it, they don’t owe the originators of that OSS any money. AS a matter of fact, that’s explicit in the GNU license agreement.
The OSS people are not anti-capitalist, they’re pro-responsibility. I trust open source more that I do MS or Apple.
The people responsible for maintaining and monitoring the code are the original whistleblowers if someone tries to deploy a distro with malicious code.
The correct term for them is “users”. Thinking that everybody using your product should “contribute” to it’s development in someway is one of the things that tells the laymen that make up the majority of your target audience they aren’t actually in your target audience.
One of the things I see missing is the potential of hundreds of thousands of people with the potential, due to experience and ability to become contributors, but somewhat removed from the "computer science" field.
Aside from formal colleges and paid schools, in addition to interest, what is missing is some sort of on line beginners, intermediate and advanced training, with real world problems to solve as part of the process.
I know I am interested, as well as many others.
Prior knowledge of astronomy, mathematics and engineering can't hurt. I know the pool is out here. For these people, sharing is never a problem.
It’s an interesting topic. I won’t get into the urinating contest except to say that anyone in the industry knows how much open source software is in use, and I could care less what they think about it.
The point of the article was the ethics of using FOSS without contributing to development, or in what ways they contribute. For example, I have developed hardware that runs with open source software to create a complete solution. The way I see it, I am helping expand awareness and pulling more potential developers in, and thus this form of contribution benefits the software developers as well. However, I get paid for the hardware, while their software is given away for free...and it’s fair to question the equity of that.
Another aspect of contributing, are users who provide suggesting, feature lists, bug reports, etc. considered as “contributing” or merely whining and complaining? Most for-profit companies treasure this “voice of the customer” input highly, but some FOSS developers consider it more of the latter, and instead pursue their own interests and development plans.
It’s an interesting model, and putting altruism and ego aside, there’s got to be a way to reward those who “make” by those who “use”. At the least, a balance should be struck between the demands of users and the desires of developers.