Τάνταλος torture
September 12, 2007Some… Interesting responses to the big QNX news and interview today.
I have been called ‘unethical’ for saying “QNX is opening up its source code”. A reader on OSNews claims that with that, I am “redefining” the meaning of open source - and that’s what he calls unethical. Ridiculous, of course. The code is open. You can look at it. Compile it. Change it. Alter it. For personal use. You can keep those changes for yourself. You can share those changes with the QNX community. You just can’t sell those changes - you can’t exploit your work commercially. In order to do that, you need to pay royalties to QNX.
Which makes total sense.
Unlike other companies such as IBM and Sun, QSS is actually quite a small company. The only stream of revenue the company has is its operating system and the services it provides. Compare this to a big shot like Sun, who does not only sell a boatload of software and services, but also has an extremely important hardware business. Sun can afford to be ‘more’ open source than QNX simply because to Sun, Solaris is financially actually fairly irrelevant. It’s by far not their greatest source of income.
QSS (QNX Software Systems) has done the right thing by their hybrid software model. They allow everyone to look at the code, download it, compile it, change it, share it with their peers or keep it to themselves, heck, they can even make a distribution and put that online - they are just not allowed to sell it. Which is logical, because else the ‘altered’ QNX versions would directly compete with QSS, and seeing those altered versions would leech for 99% off QSS’s hard work, they would be infinitely cheaper (if not free).
On top of that, by choosing this model, they made sure that their biggest competitors (VxWorks, Microsoft, and commercial Linux ‘embedders’) are forced into a ‘Τάνταλος torture‘ - they can look at it all they want, but they cannot use it for their own good.
I’m sure a healthy community can be built around QNX. I sure hope it can, in any case.
Heey, I didn’t say you were unethical. Nor did I call you unethical.
I specifically wrote that your redefinition of “open source” was unethical. Your action, but not your person. And I did NOT call your statement about “QNX being opened” for unethical. It was merely the part where you redefine the meaning of “open source” I called unethical.
When you quote me, you could at least quote me correctly instead of misrepresenting my statement. You are getting terribly good at deliberately misrepresenting statements. Quite unfortunately, I might add.
I never attacked your statement “they’re opening up the source code”. They are opening the code. But it is not “open source”. And there is nothing unethical about that statement.
The statement I specifically attacked was this one: “You can view the code, modify it for your personal use and/or contribute those changes back to the community.
Sadly, these days, it are the big organisations (FSF, OSI) who get to decide what’s open and what’s not. To me, QNX here has made a very smart move, that only benefits us enthusiasts. So, this code can’t be copied/pasted into the Linux kernel… Well, too bad, then. Doesn’t mean the code is not open.“
It is especially true for the passages in bold.
Now, stop misquoting me. Or at least ask me for clarification before you bad mouth me.
Comment by dylansmrjones — September 12, 2007 @ 11:28 pm
“Sadly, these days, it are the big organisations (FSF, OSI) who get to decide what’s open and what’s not. ”
“These days”? How old is the FSF or the OSI?
“Big organisations”? Are you fucking kidding? QSS is probably bigger than both.
Comment by thebluesgnr — September 14, 2007 @ 7:56 am