:
: From: Mike Shaver <shaver@neon.ingenia.ca>
: Date: Wed, 9 Jul 1997 19:24:59 -0400 (EDT)
:
: A friend sent this to me, and I thought it was excellent.
:
:I bet he saw it on the gcc2 developers list... from me ;-)
:
It is an excellent piece. The problem is that many will not
have the patience to read it since it is so long.
My internal "Why Linux/Freeware" web page at SGI has a pointer to
Eric Raymond's treatise (since David pointed it to me for which
I'm grateful).
To make it easier for more people to grasp I use to send
this short excerpt from the last part:
No commercial developer can match the pool of talent the Linux
community can bring to bear on a problem. Very few could afford
even to hire the more than two hundred people who have contributed
to fetchmail! [A freeware program maintained by Eric -- Ed]
Perhaps in the end the free-software culture will triumph not
because cooperation is morally right or software "hoarding" is
morally wrong (assuming you believe the latter, which neither
Linus nor I do), but simply because the commercial world cannot
win an evolutionary arms race with free-software communities that
can put orders of magnitude more skilled time into a problem.
We know this of course, now the big question is how to open the eyes
of our CEOs and high level managers (we're working on it).
--
Peace, Ariel
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