Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: scriptingNews outline for 8/26/2000

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:8/26/2000; 10:15:31 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 8/26/2000
Msg #:20322 (In response to 20320)
Prev/Next:20321 / 20323

It's hard for me to process this question, Frontier is a 12-year obsession for me, or labor of love, or whatever you want to call it. The thought of the source appearing anywhere publicly is a heavy one for me. I would never do it casually, without a lot of forethought and asking for guidance and advice from people I trust.

However, I welcome the discussion. I have been thinking about open sourcing the Frontier kernel. However, I have to see it as a good thing for the kernel and the community and my shareholders. I'd hate to get into a pissing contest over my right to evolve it as I want to. I've seen standards body discussions descend into pits of personality, and to me Frontier is how I express my software creativity, and I couldn't let anything come in the way of that.

And since the two-week self-imposed gag is almost expired, let me say that the recent experience with RSS has done a lot to convince me that never, under any circumstances will Frontier be open source. I can deal with losing a say on the future of RSS, because while I have a lot invested in it, personally, my much larger investment is in Manila, content management, server-side stuff, outlining. Also xml-rpc and soap, and Zope, etc. RSS and are a much smaller deal here, and neither of them today reflect what we're doing web content-wise, and I doubt if they can be adapted, now that the process has been snatched, and there's no way for me to move forward without getting a lot of flames. (Maybe that's not so bad?)

Anyway, I'm rambling. At the moment of decision, do I open source or not, trust is the biggest issue. I want to know that if I do the open thing, I'm not going to lose my power to move forward. If that's what I have to give up, then no thanks.

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