On open sourcing your applications

[merlyn]

but we feel that we need a technical barrier too

Just consider this:

• How much money would you be making on this contract if Perl was not open source?

And you want to be so friggin arrogant as to lock up your source? You stand on the shoulders of giants and drool onto their face.

Be gone, arrogant fool.

It's not a matter of not making money. I want you to make money with Perl. Gawd knows, I certainly have.

But what about the poor maintainence programmer who comes along after you've already gone off to better and bigger things? By locking up your source, you've effectively robbed him of a chance to help your current client. Who died and made you king of the world to be doing that? Again, especially with the fact that you're using open source software in the first place!

Or are you claiming that your code will never require maintenance? Dude, I've never written a program that I didn't edit later.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

[l2kashe]

I was thinking after my previous post, that irregardless of whether the source is open or closed, if the end product is good, or fills a niche, someone is either A) going to extend/refine it, or B) recreate it in some shape or fashion

So given your feelings, how would you suggest they go about making money off their creation, without losing their edge over the competition. I personally am adamantly for open source, but alot of people out there aren't.

You have been in this field a long time and more than likely have garnished a bit of wisdom over that time. Can you provide suggestions in regards to a (better|different) way to handle this given scenario?



/* And the Creator, against his better judgement, wrote man.c */

[merlyn]

Yes. In very simple terms, be good to your customer, and they will pick you for the followup work.

If you treat your customers like children, by locking up source, and nickeling them to death, they will rebel like children.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.