Re: [SLUG] Sun screws Open Source beta community (again)

From: R P Herrold (herrold@owlriver.com)
Date: Mon Feb 25 2002 - 09:38:46 EST


On Sun, 24 Feb 2002, Robin 'Roblimo' Miller wrote:

> R P Herrold wrote:
>
> >>From Slashdot:
> >
> > Sun to Charge for Star Office 6.0
>
> Why is any sane person surprised by this?

No sane person would be -- but Miguel de Icaza is going down
the same road with .Net (and leading development, doco, and
advocacy talent away with him), away from the core goal of a
Free Application layer buildout --- and anyone with an IQ
greater than the February air temperature in Duluth can see
how this will end.

I don't care that Open Source 'chases the tail-lights' -- it
keeps us from chasing down vaporware blind alleys. An 80 %
bullet list match covers the REAL usage patterns of 95 % of
the desktop, if not more. And OUR stuff actually works
without crashing.

Good intentions go so far -- but if you don't have the source
with a right to redistribute, 'you ain't got that swing.' The
old RMS with fire and brimstone suits me just fine. There are
just too many traps for the innocent and the unwary without a
BSD or GPL license and source in hand, ready to fork.

Good intentions worked with Qt, for TrollTech reciprocated;
Sun can talk the talk all it wants, but it won't walk the
walk. The Open Source community needs to walk away from them
-- to continue to think they are good guys for they are going
to package a Gnome X-top on Solaris is naive.

-- Russ Herrold



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