Hi readers
As I have stumbled through my stories with Blogger and blogging, I got to thinking about 2 things that I believe are important. Both of them have relation to technology and software. These are those issues:
- What impact have large vendors on open source projects?
- Why my is browser slow?
It came to me after I read an article, about Sun being bully to a developers of CIFS server in Java. The project was open source, and its main developers were all Sun's employees. But then, in weird series of events, all developers were fired from Sun, and Sun forced its control over the project. All that while the project is still open source!!
So, what is the purpose of such a project? If a large company forces its own rule on an open source project - what is the point for the project to be an open source one? I can understand the business targets of any vendor. Its purpose it to make money, and the company would do almost anything to reach that goal. But if the openness of the projects doesn't really contribute to making money, why do it?
One of the reasons I could think of, is a hope for a big audience of feedback and reactions. Many users using an open software, would see the code or use it for free, and then report bugs. Then a vendor can analyze these reports and figure out which ones to fix, and which ones are leads to further technological developments. And all this without investing in its own QA department!
I find such behavior as dishonest, and that is what Sun seems to me these days. Please don't get me wrong - I like Sun's products and I like the idea of them doing things the open source way. But I don't like the bully-like attitude some big vendors have. As if "our people did it, hence we own it!"
I disagree with such politics, and though this may seem to you higly subjective, I like more the way of IBM and Google (but I'm sure anyone can find "bad" examples with them too).
So, will Blogger respond on peoples' complains? Or, sorry, Google?
Just a thought.
