[maemo-developers] Corporate ownership of open source projects [LWN]

[From: Ian Lawrence]

Hi,
>  On the back of my post, "maemo.org: what next?"[1], it was interesting
>  to read in yesterday's LWN that the community around OpenSolaris feels
>  very much shut out of internal Sun development processes:
I am seeing a lot of discussions around this at the moment.
I really like this post
http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2008/04/26/organic-vs-non-organic-open-source-revisited/
and from it:
'If a project decides to release its code under an open source
license, but nearly all the developers remain employed by a single
company, it doesn't really change the dynamic compared to when the
project was previously under a closed-source license. It is a
necessary but not sufficient step towards attracting outside
contributors, and eventually migrating towards having a true open
source development community. But if those further steps are not
taken, the hopes that users will think that some project is "cool"
because it is under an open-source license will ultimately be in vain.
The "Generation Y"/Millennial Generation in particular are very
sensitive indeed to Astroturfing-style marketing tactics.

My own *personal* opinion is that we either need to be open or not. If
open, then open, let us root around in the guts of the source and let
go. If closed. close it and put the beast out of its misery. My fear
is that it is now too late for the first option as perhaps most of
the 'heads' have now moved on to more fertile pastures. I am probably
wrong though, open source developers are a pretty strange and a pretty
forgiving bunch
Ian
-- 
http://ianlawrence.info