[Sussex] A Brief Guide to Open-Source

[Mark Harrison (Groups)]

On Tue, 2005-12-20 at 23:36 +0000, Geoffrey Teale wrote:
> 
> The unfortunate thing about "Open Source" as a term is that it was
> developed 
> as a marketing tool. 


And that one sentence pretty much epitomises a key difference between
Geoff and I.

Both of us agree that the term "Open Source" was developed as a
marketing tool.

However, Geoff considers this "unfortunate". I consider this
"excellent".


I've found the term "Open Source" has a better hit rate for me at
getting customers to buy than "Free".

I suspect, however, that the term "Free" has a far better hit rate at
getting developers to "buy into" the concept, and contribute.

As for the rest of Geoff's post - I agree with 90% of what he says.


Mark