>
> Bottom line is we're not sure what to do now. Opinions from the
> floor, anyone?
>
From the lowly end of the floor... for what I am concerned, I'm not
worried about the involvment of the core team. Instead, I'm happy
that companies like GB and Postgres Inc have been founded.
I'm not an active member of open source community (if not for
advocating it), but just for the lack of skill. I know RS's and ESR's
works, I think I got the ideas, but I think that "commercial support"
is useful for the quality of the projects, and not detrimental.
I really think that there is no possibility that a commercial company
based on a open source project could steer away from the good of
the project. The equation is simple: the more the "product" is good,
the more the company would penetrate the market.
We all know that marketing and FUD approaches are incompatable
with open source projects, just the quality of the product can give
people the reason to adopt it.
What should we fear? That GB will purpusedly put some limitations
or bugs in tha code, so they could gain more on supporting it
(ya 'now, somebody says that some guy have earned billions
following this strategy ;-))?
But this is simply not feasible. They don't sell the product, so they
could not gain on "new realeses" and "service packs". And who
could hide bugs in an open source project and call them "features"?
At the most, as Tom said, they will be more focused to hunt bugs
and add features basing on requests made by paying customers.
Well, those are nonetheless bugs that will be corrected and new
features that will be added, and we all will benefit for them. There's
good chance that they are the same bugs and same features that
some of OUR customers (I'm meaning "we" as in "independent
consultants and developers that use open source projects as
tools") will ask for.
And this way the people that are working on that will be also well
payed (er, I don't know the payrolls, I'm just hoping that they are
good...), and I can't see anything bad in that!
No, as I said, commercial companies investing in open source
development can only do good.
just my 0.02 Euro ;-)
and good luck to all core members for their new jobs!
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Fabrizio Ermini Alternate E-mail:
C.so Umberto, 7 faermini@tin.it
loc. Meleto Valdarno Mail on GSM: (keep it short!)
52020 Cavriglia (AR) faermini@sms.tin.it
