Re: Netscape Client is Free; Source Code to Go Public - DevEdge News Special Bulletin (fwd)

[Graham Leggett <graham@xxxxxxx>]

B. Craig Taverner wrote:

> This has been really widely posted already, I've even seen it on some US
> financial information email distributions because of the economic
> implications for netscape.  However, I've not seen it on glug, so I
> thought I'd send it through so those of you not on other lists can get the
> announcement.
> 
> This is the first time I know of a major commercial software vendor taking
> their commercial proprietary code and moving into the public domain with
> the aim of *improving* development.
> 
> Perhaps people are beginning to realize the real value in public domain
> development approaches.  I hope it works for this unique case of
> ex-proprietary code.

I think this is probably one of the most fiendish ways I have seen where
a company wreaks it's revenge on their foe.

The main gripe that myself and many people I know have against the
browsers (and in fact most commercial software) is that none of the
software actually works.

At this stage of the software industry's development, software packages
have become too big to remain manageable by the typical programming
teams working on them. As software becomes more complex, teams must get
bigger to support them and keep the code bug free. At the same time,
software developers cannot afford to maintain these teams.

In addition to this, I feel that in the future it is likely that the
"voetstoots" take-what-you-get nature of software licencing where the
purchaser has no recourse should the software fail or crash will come
into question by government and commercial interests. Laws are likely to
change probably making software developers liable to fix bugs in their
code, and if they don't, they are liable to be sued for damages. Should
this in fact happen, it will make the software industry of the future an
interesting story to watch.

In the short term though, I think it's been proved through the old
saying "many hands make light work" that freely accessible source code
to software is the solution to the huge software quality problem.

Regards,
Graham
-- 
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graham@xxxxxxx			"There's a moon
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