Subject: Re: source access vs dynamism From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/08/27 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3144735996390160@naggum.no> * User Knotwell <knotwell@knotwell.ix.netcom.com> | I'm trying to understand your point of view. Based on your posts on this | topic, it appears to me that you're advocating for source access based on | merit and/or investment. What is your reasoning for this position? I'm advocating source access to people who express an actual desire and need for it. "investment" here isn't monetary, as in "an investment of time and effort", but a concern that one has limited resources and want to maximize the value of using those resources. without a sense of "investment", people are likely to waste what they get. | 1) inexpensive. I've always been amazed by the people who try to make | out that this isn't a big motivator. Does anyone else but me snort | when they see a comment like "I'd pay for it even if it wasn't free?" of course it's a big motivator for the users. who argues against that? | 2) lacking in administrative bullsh*t. IBM's C compiler for the RS/600 cost $400. Personally, I don't care about the $400 (a cost of doing business). On the other hand, I do care about having to chase down a PO. I do care about having to install a goofy-a** license monitor to make sure I don't do something evil. Similarly, I do care about having to call IBM sales support to get a new license key when we decide to move development to a new box with a faster network card. . .I could go on, but I'm even starting to bore myself :-). of course it helps to deal with non-stupid people. however, there are lots and lots of license-restricted software products that doesn't need any of this administrative bullshit. if "PO" is a Purchase Order, it is unclear to me whether that is a requirement of IBM or of your company. I have worked for companies where senior programmers are given budgets to purchase tools and time alotments attend courses without individual management approval. | 3) generally tailored towards use on commodity hardware. this implies that commodity hardware would have been ignored if it weren't for the current crop of freely available source-based tools. I don't think this is the case. the quality of implementation may be an issue, but SCO Unix and even SUN Solaris for Intel are certainly present in the market. | 4) another tool in the fight against getting jabbed by your vendor. To be honest, I believe a better tool in this fight would be open, understandable data formats so my data won't be held "captive" against it's will. well, I worked with SGML for half a decade because I believed it would be a means to free the data, but that turned out to be false, it makes no difference whatsoever. if your data should be less captive, I think the way to go needs to be the ability to call functions to retrieve objects and manage them. again, dynamic languages win big in my view. there might be an issue of just how much you get access to even in a running system, but at least the world isn't closed up. I personally fail to see why people don't take this "getting jabbed by your vendor" thing much more seriously. if you're afraid of it, and you don't tackle the issue head-on, is it because you _fear_ the vendor? do you actually _need_ products that will likely cripple you in the future? (I don't think so.) have you ever talked to the vendor and expressed your concern? if you haven't, do it now. if you have and was dissed, why do you still deal with them? this is the labor union thing all over again, except now with entities you'd expect were able to defend their own interests much better. | 5) community-oriented. From what I can tell, open source projects tend to do an extremely good job of putting "customers" and developers together. On the other hand, most commercial companies where I've worked went out of there way to keep developers and customers apart (counter-productive in my view). yup, counter-productive in the extreme. if you use a software tool for developers, and you can't talk to the developers of the tool, you have made a mistake in purchasing it. however, this is not a function of source access, but of smart people who actually care about what they do. you have pointed at several issues that point to why people should choose source-based products instead of shrink-wrapped products, and I agree with all of them, but at issue is not source vs shrink-wrap, in my view: at issue is a lot of incompetent people who are mortally afraid that if anyone saw their source, they'd be exposed as the frauds they are, and I actually believe that a certain major software company in Redmond, WA, would be history the day its sources were released in a much more important sense than any other company would fold if its trade secrets were dispersed. I have argued elsewhere that I think a big motivator in the source-based software world is legitimate rejection of said company and its extremely predatory behavior. however, defense against idiocy and evil is not an end in itself -- you have to have a pretty clear picture of what you're fighting _for_. while destroying a company that has defrauded millions if not a billion of people is a very worthy goal, we need to consider what comes after it, and we need to consider what we want to accomplish when the idiotic evil is gone, otherwise, we'll just give rise to another. | Why do I get the feeling I'll regret this? beats me. and you don't come with source, so I can't fix your problem. #:Erik -- save the children: just say NO to sex with pro-lifers