Comments on: Leveraging OSS As A Software Developer

By: ismangil

ismangil — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:12:23 +0000

“almost all worthwhile code is available under a less restrictive license.”

That is quite an amazing statement to make. So in essence you are saying “very little worthwhile code is available under GPL”.

Although come to think of it maybe you’re on to something. Besides Linux, what else is there under GPL worthwhile for developers anyway?

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:40:45 +0000

I don’t think the web app loophole is killing GPL nearly as fast as the loss of mindshare is. Now that everybody and their dog is doing OSS, many of whom are not terribly inspired by Information Is Meant To Be Free!!! as a rationale for doing it, almost all worthwhile code is available under a less restrictive license. Most Rails-related code, for example, is licensed as MIT, which basically means “Use it how you want. If it breaks, you’re on your own.”

By: Alexis Christoforides

Alexis Christoforides — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:38:44 +0000

Of course, things are a little bit different when trying to be bring open-source in your closed-source desktop application. The once almighty GPL license might be becoming irrelevant because of the web app loophole, but it’s still forbidden to bring any of that code in to help yourself out if you’re not planning to distribute your code too. You probably know already that discoveries of such foul play, though infrequent, kindle the scorn of open-source developers for ISVs, and rightly so I would say.

Not that I would mind doing sharing my code at all.In fact I’ve been toying* with the idea of bundling the source code with my products**, for all the same reasons that open-source people do it and because I’m not convinced that it’s all that detrimental of a action as some make it to be. Plus I’ve probably worked on more open-source code than closed-source, and still am, so obviously I have nothing but respect for the ideologies of the movement.

* I’m still toying with the idea because even my under-developed business sense still tells me that I should investigate more before doing something so drastic.
** I was actually thinking about a step up from bundling the code: actually building the program on the computer it’s being installed on, and rebuild every time the code is modified. Now that Windows machines finally come with a build system and a fast compiler, it’s at least worth thinking about.

P.S I am very glad to learn that I am not the only person who loves Windows Vista. It’s worth it just for the Start Menu and Previous Versions.