[General] Open Source maturity

Sat Jun 27 12:32:53 +03 2009

Why, why, must we start Microsoft bashing whenever a mature discussion
on open source starts?

"
> Microsoft has been doing open source projects (on a very light side)
> for quite some time, but their projects are negligible, they use their
> own license, and their own portal, instead of using an existing Open
> Source license and SourceForge.net. (Reminds you of OOXML, no? ;p)
"

What does using their own portal have to do anything with open source? By your
logic, freshmeat.net is also "negligible", so is collabnet and tigris.org?

Codeplex ( http://www.codeplex.com/ ) is Microsoft's initiative to provide
a community for .NET programmers that are developing open source code;
why is it such a bad thing?

"They use their own license [...] instead of using an existing Open
Source license":

>From the Codeplex FAQ:

What licenses does CodePlex support?
Project coordinators can select from a list of the following OSI
licenses: Apache License 2.0, Common Development and Distribution
License (CDDL), Eclipse Public License (EPL), GNU General Public
License (GPL) v2, GNU Library General Public License (LGPL), Microsoft
Public License (Ms-PL), Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL), Mozilla
Public License 1.1 (MPL), New BSD License, and The MIT License. If
your project requires a license that is not on the list, you can
request a custom license using the contact us form.

Please, lets keep the discussion free of FUD[1]; as we already have
tons of people around to spread that. This will increase the quality
of our discussion and also help those that are unfamiliar or new to
the topic understand FACTUAL information rather than rumors and
propaganda.

Talal:

  You cannot do justice to Open Source without reading 'The Cathedral
and the Bazaar' by Eric S. Raymond, ISBN: 0596001088 - this is perhaps
the first book that truly ignited the mainstream open source
"revolution". It was published I believe first in 1999 or 2000 -- to
give you an idea of the significance of the book.

  Your presentation and PDF were stripped from the list, so please
upload somewhere and provide a link.

Thanks,
--
Burhan Khalid

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Majed B.<majedb at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Talal!
>
> I have just finished reading the book: Just for Fun: The Story of an
> Accidental Revolutionary
> Link: http://www.amazon.com/Just-Fun-Story-Accidental-Revolutionary/dp/0066620732/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246085493&sr=8-1
>
> The book is by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond and it tells you how
> Linux started, how Open Source started, its meaning, goals and some
> points of Open Source vs. Copyright/Closed Source approaches.
>
> The book is FUN, as it says, and funny at times. I finished it in less
> than a week with a few hours of reading a day. It's not like you can
> drop the book once starting, but sometimes you're compelled :p
>
> Microsoft has been doing open source projects (on a very light side)
> for quite some time, but their projects are negligible, they use their
> own license, and their own portal, instead of using an existing Open
> Source license and SourceForge.net. (Reminds you of OOXML, no? ;p)
>
> As long as Microsoft's management is the same old blood, nothing will
> change. Will keep releasing alpha binaries as initial releases,
> release new OS versions where they should be service packs, frustrate
> users with ever changing User Interface (UI) and Steve Ballmer will
> keep throwing chairs...
>
> On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 2:08 AM, Talal Al Awadhi<talal at alawadhi.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have been thinking in the past 2 days, 4 hours in a day minimum, about
>> Open Source as a term.
>>
>> So, I decided to google Open Source 30 minutes back, I wanted to read more
>> about how it started. And how this "Concept" has grown lately solidly &
>> successfully, but slowly, which also made the growth solid on a concrete
>> foundation.
>>
>> Some has started commercializing the Open Source driven products in
>> different techniques (Red Hat, MySQL, Scalix, vBulletin, SugarCRM), and some
>> started converting closed source projects to Open Source (Symbian by NOKIA).
>>
>> Figures, either by adoption, or financial results proves the success that
>> Open Source is giving looks amazing. Looking at the android pre-release
>> acceptance for this mobile OS, driven by the Open Source Phenomena, proves
>> that the wave of Open Source is coming no matter what happens or other huge
>> players act or improve in their closed source projects and softwares.
>>
>> I expect personally, that Microsoft gets into the wave very soon (Forced for
>> sure to keep its leading position in the software market) either wise it
>> will lose its leading position to other software vendors who can understand
>> & develop an innovative way of producing a competing money making softwares
>> for public under the Open Source umbrella.
>>
>> Coming back to the beginning, I believe that till today, you can't relay on
>> a book to get accurate information or a right understanding on what Open
>> Source is, how it started, and how to commercialize Open Source in an
>> ethical way, or lets say "The right way of doing it", or the right way to
>> explain it to people who doesn't understand Open Source. Below some examples
>> on books on Open Source:
>> Producing Open Source Software by Karl Fogel
>> The Success of Open Source by Steven Weber
>> The Open Source Alternative by Heather J. Meeker
>> Open Sources 2.0 by Chris DiBona, Mark Stone, and Danese Cooper
>>
>> I highly believe that many conflicting information are there in these books,
>> even though they share and support Open Source. But I was not able to get a
>> concrete information about it. And thats healthy and normal, its just a new
>> thing growing world wide, and these great people are trying to document what
>> ever they know about it.
>>
>> Here is an attached PowerPoint slides (and a PDF copy of it for Linux people
>> here), that summarize Open Source and how it started.
>>
>> I would appreciate to see some corrections on what is written there, to help
>> me and anyone Interested on understanding Open Source history, to be able to
>> forecast how fast it can go forward, and to help also in convincing more
>> people by explaining it in a right way as open source deserves to be
>> explained.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Talal AlAwadhi
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> http://oskw.org/mailman/listinfo/general_oskw.org
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
>       Majed B.
>
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