Subscription/Service Fees - OSD Intent

[Karsten M. Self]

on Sat, Mar 31, 2001 at 06:32:07AM -0800, Carol A. Kunze (ckunze at ix.netcom.com) wrote:
> At 01:23 AM 3/31/01 -0800, Chris Sloan wrote:
> >On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 07:51:15AM -0500, Forrest J Cavalier III wrote:
> >[...]
> > > He explained the difference using the example of a museum
> > > open to the public.  Any member of the public has a "right"
> > > to enter the museum.  But they still have to pay the admission fee.
> >
> >I would have said that, precisely speaking, a member of the public
> >doesn't have "the right to enter the museum."  He has "the right to
> >enter the museum upon paying admission."
> >
> >Many rights are limited or assume certain conditions.  Living the the
> >US, I have the right to free speech, but that doesn't mean that it is
> >the "right to free speech without limits."
> >
> >Maybe I missed the distinction you were making.
> >
> >         Chris
> >
> >--
> >Chris Sloan
> >cds at ghs.com
> >Systems Software Engineer
> >Green Hills Software
> 
> Stepping away from a technical interpretation of the OSD, the requirement 
> of a license fee seems inconsistent because it jeopardizes the primary 
> byproduct resulting from the open source model of developing and 
> distributing software - the stability and high quality of the product.
> 
> When the potential talent pool from which a product can draw programmers is 
> the world - the consequences show in the quality of the product.
> 
> Charging a license fee to run the product reduces that talent pool to a 
> company's programmers and its paying customers.  What's more it means 
> centralized control.  This isn't bazaar - its cathedral.

Moreover, and this is my argument against long-term adoption of a "gated
community" approach, with an open software model, the collective
development community of two software projects is the _union_ of the
individual communities.  The collective development community for the
same projects under a "gated" model is the _intersection_ of the two
communities.  As you extend this out to more and more projects, the
intersection development community tends to get smaller and smaller.  

If the value of the community is seen as behaving like a Metcalfe
network, the negative effects of such partitioning are proportional to
the square of the size of the network.

These are among the reasons I find such suggestions to be highly
nonoptimal.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>    http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?       There is no K5 cabal
  http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/         http://www.kuro5hin.org
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