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I think open source is cool too, but why must 100% of all software be open source?

Why can't people just accept that some times, and maybe even most of them time open source is the best solution, but it is not the only solution to every problem.

Depends on how you define opensource and conforming to the licence. One only needs to look at the flack Apple got for the fact that they didn't bend over backwards to provide assistance to KDE developers to get the changes merged from webkit into khtml.

For some, the mere presence of source code is enough to satisfy their definition of 'open source' whilst others claim that for something to be truly open source, it has to include the active participation of the said company in the development in a community like atmosphere.

As for 90 day development cycle, it would be an easy thing to do; just make sure that the updates you provide are either trivial or well tested. Give that they have only one target platform, and they can routinely test the OS, the release cycle of 90 days isn't all that difficult.

There was a common saying in the Soviet Union:

"Anything that isn't forbidden is compulsory. The trick is figuring out which is which."

Just for the record (I know, this is a tired old topic), there's a widely accepted and quite unambiguous definition of "open source software", if by "widely accepted" I may mean the one found in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software

Of course, I won't deny that everyone is free to invent and use other definitions, but they should warn about their non-mainstream definition if they use it in articles, blog entries and the like. Doing otherwise would be misleading and bad stile.

HERETIC! Thou shall not utter such blasphemy!

I STRIKE THEE DOWN!


Well, not me, but you will get modded down rather fast, I'm sure

you must be given options before you can choose ... a few people must live in the extremes on both sides of the argument to give you the opportunity to decide how far you want to stand between the arguments ..

the world isnt black and white but some people must present it that way to clearly show the issues ..you can blur it to your convenience but its nice to know where the limits are ..

Edited 2008-07-18 21:09 UTC

Because...

The solution to the problem is the code itself. It being open or not doesn't have any intrinsic properties that preclude it from solving any problem that is solvable with a Turing Machine.

*Alert* Stallman follower detected in quadrant B.

What you fail to understand is, people are mostly decent at some basic level... Although they made a proprietary product based on the BSD code base, they probably *do* report back to the maintainers.

A lot of commercial users of BSD products are more then willing to contribute back in some way.. but they're not forced to do so at all.

Even if they don't contribute back, they still have the include the licence notices in product documentation.

Edited 2008-07-19 16:21 UTC

I have my doubts as to whether Juniper has ever contributed anything at all to upstream FreeBSD. Certainly I can find no evidence of any such contributions after conducting a Google search. The very fact that they're allowed to do this is, to me, a shame. If you benefit from FOSS, it just strikes me as greedy and wrong that you can get away with giving nothing back...

Well they did...



http://www.freebsd.org/news/newsflash.html

It took about 5 sec on google to find that information.

Hmm... They've been using FreeBSD code in their OS for a decade and all they've ever given back is a barebones port to niche platform. A port which they had completed YEARS before they made it available.

Not exactly a stellar track record. Yes the BSD license ALLOWS this, but that's just proof of how broken and naive the BSD license is. The BSD license comes with a silent and unenforceable implication that "sharing is nice" The GPL is more like a kindergarten teacher that will put you in "time out" if you aren't nice and don't share. Given the level of greed in the tech world, the GPL approach is much more realistic vis a vis maintaining a truly free project.

Bzzt, they're "getting way with it" because the developers chose the BSD license which allow using code without contributing back..
The developers have chosen *willingly* this licence, so there's *nothing* wrong doing this.

Now, a project live and die but the contributions, so from a long term POV, it's not very wise to take only without contributing back, it's a short term gain with a long term risk..

An example is that if Apple had contributed better from the start instead of having two web-engine (KHtml and webkit) there would be only one, which would probably be even better thanks to having more developers..

From the FreeBSD Foundation's July Newsletter ( http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/press/2008Jul-newsletter.shtml#Jun... ):

Juniper benefits from the powerful collaboration between leading universities, individuals, and commercial organizations developing FreeBSD to advance the operating system functionality. The FreeBSD release system provides Juniper with a roadmap for features and a stable base for our code, while its practical licensing enables Juniper to develop intellectual property for advancing high-performance networking. Juniper employs many active FreeBSD developers that continually contribute to the FreeBSD project to further its development as a leading operating system.

-Naren Prabhu, Vice President Foundation Technologies, Juniper Networks www.juniper.net
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Guess you didn't look all that hard.

Right-o. Good thing that could never happen with the GPL. That surely explains why people here where whining themselves silly last week over how Ubuntu doesn't contribute to the community...

The bottom line is: you're free to license _your_ open source project as you require / see fit.

http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors.shtml