Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Degree of open source developers
Author: Ken MacLeod Posted: 8/24/2000; 10:04:04 AM Topic: Next survey: Are you an open source developer? Msg #: 20101 (In response to 19977) Prev/Next: 20100 / 20102
While "I've released open source software" provides a clear answer of whether someone has ever released open source software, it doesn't really capture whether or not someone is an open source developer. For example, AOL/Netscape is not generally considered an open source developer, even though they have released a major open source project, and Cygnus and RedHat are considered open source developers, even though they have non-open-source products. I think it's both an attitude as well as hard code.Getting a little more fuzzy, there are degrees of open source projects. There are still a few projects that release open source code, but where the project itself is open only to invited members (the "cathedral" model in TCATB). A common newbie technique for companies "testing the waters" with open source is also to release their code, APIs, or specs under an open or near-open source license, but keep the development close to or entirely internal to the company; these companies are often very surprised when their source gets forked (routed around) because they're unwilling to go a direction that a number of their users want to go.
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