[Bluej-discuss] Open Source

[Aryeh M. Friedman]

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Paul McCard wrote:
> I broadly support the tenor of Lon's comments.  I also feel there
> is a mistaken implicit assumption in some of the lobbying here that
>  simply because the developers of a software artefact allow it to
> be used and distributed without charge - for which, voluminous
> thanks! - it somehow follows that it /should/ be open source;
> almost that it is somehow bad faith to retain control over the
> source.  But it simply /doesn't/ follow.
>
> Of course, previous correspondents have identified legitimate
> benefits which might accrue from the open sourcing of the BlueJ
> code.  There are also potential disadvantages, primarily around the
>  dissolution of a currently unified BlueJ community.  But the
> bottom line is that BlueJ is not, and never has been, an open
> source community development, and the development team and their
> supporting institutions are perfectly entitled to retain that
> control if they so choose.

Like Lon and some others your confusing the technical issues of open
vs. closed source with the business/community issues.  This is not
your fault because the FOSS community in general has either
purposefully and/or inadvertently confused the two in the public's
mind.   For example under the current model there is nothing stopping
me from making a plug-in that does exactly what you and Lon (and
myself) don't want to see in a student oriented IDE (in my case KISS
for professional use).  At the same time the development team has
every right not to include such a plug-in the base configuration.
Making BJ modifiable source or not modifiable source does not change this.

As to the business issues the references I posted before show clearly
there is no business disadvantage to having user modifiable source if
structured properly.   This only leaves the issue of how much
community involvement there should be in the development of BJ.   For
the most part this is completely up to the development team.   All I
am saying is if the primary reason for not going open source is
financial SIW and to a lesser extent dual licenses make it so the two
can live side by side peacefully.

- --
Aryeh M. Friedman
Developer, not business, friendly
http://www.flosoft-systems.com
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