RE: Open Source

["Scott M. Stone" <sstone@example.com>]

On Wed, 4 Oct 2000, Jonathan Shore wrote:

> 
> 
> > From: Frank BENNETT [mailto:bennett@example.com]
> >
> > Hmm.  Pardon me for intruding on the discussion, but this puzzles me.  How
> > does one decide whether enough demand exists, and if the answer
> > is "yes", what
> > decision on disclosure follows from that?
> 
> 
> Good question - I think I know where you're going with this.  Two ways both
> with advantages and disadvantages:
> 
> * put the source out there and see
> * guess
> 
> The first approach is not as simple as one might think.  Requires placement,
> procedure, a little "marketing", documentation, and some work to take it out
> of its environment.  The success of the response will depend on all of
> these.  Simply placing the source as-is is much less likely to attract
> developers or users of the app/env.
> 
> As for guessing, if my application is tightly bound to a specific
> environment, and that within a small niche of interest for most users, I
> would have to do a lot of work to make it appeal or be usable by a larger
> base.  This is something I cannot afford to do at the moment.

maybe I, in classical "me" fashion, am colossally missing the point again,
but couldn't you, if the need exists to develop something short term, just
DO it and then post the code up LATER after you've announced it?  That's
pretty much what we did with TL.. let's take for example turbopkg, my
little baby that I still sometimes use, despite the fact that Certain
Parties fscked it up a bit.  I developed the thing and pretty much nobody
saw the code until I was ready to start testing it.  Once it was ready for
alpha test, it got merged into the current TL beta tree stamped with, I
believe, an LGPL license, and was sent out to beta testers and made
available in source form by www/ftp as well.  Ask Steve T, he was one of
my (best) beta testers back in 98.  (seriously I had entire work days that
were consumed 100% by investigating and fixing stuff that Steve
singlehandedly rooted out.  Unfortunately we still shipped with bugs, but
so does everyone else :) ).

So why is that "not ok"?  or am I missing the point?  can't you just write
the thing and then release the code as GPL/LGPL when you're ready?  Or is
it that to comply with the bizarre..er, BAZAAR model, you have to have it
open *while* you're writing it?

--------------------------
Scott M. Stone, CCNA <sstone@example.com>
UNIX Systems and Network Engineer
Taos - The SysAdmin Company