February 1st, 2005
Memo to Sun: stop whining
Today David Berlind has a great piece about Sun executives complaining that they "give and they give" but the open source community keeps demanding more.
What exactly does the open source community want, Sun asks.
Sun could start with some honesty. Sun continues to want it both ways. It wants to claim it’s "open source" but it doesn’t want to meet the obligations of being open source, which is essentially to let go.
By that I mean true open source lets go of the entire idea that tools (as opposed to applications which do something) are proprietary.
To someone versed in open source, demanding royalties under specific conditions for building with a program is like demanding royalties on a hammer for each nail you drive.
To Sun all software is an expensive proposition which, like a movie, demands royalties for each use, forever-and-ever, under whatever terms the copyright holder can get them.
They want credit? Here’s credit. You done good, we hereby pat you on the head.
Now, you want money? We ain’t got any. You want to be considered a member of our community? Then live like one.
In other words –Sun-ny boy, stop whining.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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