[Gllug] "Open source has its own problems" - article inComputing

[alan lenton]

This comes from memory, so I may be wrong in some details, but as I 
recall...

Intellectual Property: Marshall's idea of employers' IP rights comes 
from the US model. The US model in turn derives from Edison, who, as an 
inventor himself, wrote into his employee's contracts that anything they 
invented, in working hours or out of it, was the property of the Edison 
Company.

The model of that contract was adopted by US industry and became a de 
facto standard for inclusion in employees' contracts. I would guess that 
the principle is not, even in the US, enshired in law, it is merely an 
artifact of the contract between the employer and the employee.

This would explain various comments to this list about employers 
including such a clause in their contracts - they wouldn't need to do 
that if it was automatic by law.

Software design: I agree that good software needs design upfront. So 
show me examples of where proprietory software demonstrates its 
superiority at this level over open source. I don't think open source 
projects are any more prone to design failure than proprietory 
solutions. Oh, and When was the last time you heard of an open source 
failure of the scale of EDS's failure on the Tax Credit front?

Professionalism: Hah! This is just a rehash of the 'all open source 
programmers wear sandals, have long hair and beards, and smoke dope' 
crud. Actually there are studies that indicate that most open source 
programmers are programming professionals, not amateurs. And as for the 
games situation. The current games market is so ossified and derivative 
that the last serious breakthrough in gaming technology and design - ID 
Software's Doom, had to be given away free in the net to get a look in!

I worked in games in the 80's. Yes there was plenty of crap, but there 
was also some ace programming, and new game concepts were produced with 
startling frequency. When was the last time you bought a game that kept 
you up playing it till the sun came up the following morning?

Innovation: I admit there are not all that many truely innovative 
products in the open source movement, hardly surprising, it's actually a 
very new mileu. Now, tell me, where are all the 'innovative' packages in 
the proprietory market? Windows XP? Oracle 9i? Anything by EDS?

Linux may not be some fantastic breakthrough in operating system design. 
But it brought a reliable multi-user platform at minimal cost to those 
who were then able to use it to exercise their creativity.

And you Mr Marshal. Do you have a program you've written embodying all 
the virtues that you claim Open Source software lacks?

Do you not think that as someone who is employed by a publicly funded, 
or at least semi-funded, insitution, you should not be giving back to 
the people of this country some of the fruits of the work they have 
already paid for?

alan lenton
http://www.ibgames.net/alan/
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