From: Hendrik Lipka (hendrik.lipka_at_gmx.de)
Date: Thu Sep 09 2004 - 05:46:07 PDT
Wednesday, September 8, 2004, 6:16:48 PM, you wrote:
> As a developer who puts his stuff out there for free (as in free beer),
> you are the first one receiving bug reports, feature requests, rants
> (and of course also praise, raves, and support). As I understood it the
But the same is true if I would sell my software (but then the users have
a right to complain).
Maybe one should make clear what the state of the software is: do you want
to support it, and devlop it further, or are you just releasing it bacuse
other person should benefit from your work also?
> If I were in the position to decide about the availability of a project
> such as the Newton emulator, which for sure will generate a huge
> interest, huge problems with getting it to work and potentially, a huge
> number of people trying and possibly being disappointed, I would think
> more than twice about open sourcing it.
I think it doesn't make such a huge difference whether you release buggy /
problematic software for free or if you sell it - the users will complain
with any problems. But if you explain that there may be problem, users of
free software will tend to be more understanding that there are problems,
and maybe they are willing to help you out.
If you release something as open source, you give more users then chance to
contribute - but you must live with that there will be many questions how
something works (and you will answer them many times...)
There are many reasons for releasing software as open source:
1) you want to attract developers
2) you want to make sure your software will be free even if you can't
support it any more
3) you want to give something back to the community
and many more.
1) is problematic in the Newton community - there are only limited
ressources of developers available, and most of them have already their
projects
2) is the reason why I release my software under the GPL - I just don't
know wether I can support it in the future, but it would be a pity if the
software would vanish just because I'm not able to maintain it. This hast
too often happened - see the many discussions about abandonware.
And maybe its jist because I happen to get hit by truck tomorrow, and my
website will simply be disabled (because nobody knows what to do with it) -
this could happen to everybody on this list...
> build other solutions, you might be restricting specific uses (such as
> commercial exploitation) by chosing specific license schemes.
If you want to limit commercial use, the GPL would be the best option (or
you use one of the Commons licenses).
hli
--
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www.hendriklipka.de
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