[Freeswitch-users] GPL Wins Again

[Jean-Yves F. Barbier]

Le Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:11:47 -0400,
"M. Ranganathan" <mranga at gmail.com> a écrit :

...
> Many big companies ( IBM for example ) pay employees to contribute to
> open source.  I am an employee of a company that has paid me to
> contribute to open source.  I have also given away many of my
> contributions in the past and am very glad to report that they are
> alive and well. That is a terrific feeling. On the other hand, if only
> I had a penny for each closed source byte I have contributed to the
> big bit bucket in the sky....
> 
> Further, OSS is really the ONLY way for little guys to compete. Linux
> would have never become what it is if it were a bit company closed
> source project.

Not only!

A small anecdote: in france, there are about 400 theaters of "arts &
essais" (mean they project unknown and low budgets films usually from not
so well known directors that would never be in the regular circuit), they
all use the same software which was first a closed source.

The software company bankrupted and the former CEO refused to release the
source until a wise judge ordered him to do so.
This withholding put theaters in troubles because of law changes that add
some mandatory printing on the tickets and because of some weird bugs too.

The company that was asked to continue the work took serious decisions: a
total rewrite into java for people that wanted to use another OS than w$
(these theaters have very little money, so a w$ license is a hi spending
for them) and they put the software into open-source.

At this time, some theaters' guys with programming skills are cooperating
with the software company to improve the software, theaters are now
sure whatever will happen to the company they won't ever be blocked and
the quality of the software is now so high that you can leave the control
computer on 24/7.

So, advantages aren't reserved to the programmer, they're also shared by
the client.

JY
-- 
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.