On 4 May 2001, at 20:17, Patrick O'Keeffe wrote:

> Due to my shifting priorities it has become nigh on impossible to meet
> my commitments to Marathon and my customers as fully as I would like
> to. To this end we have decided to open source Marathon.
>
> This decision has been a long time in the making and was not easy to
> come to as it is difficult to 'let go'.
>
> I am basically writing to canvas your opinion on the best way forward
> before I just 'chuck the source out there'.

The best open source model, has to be the Linux Kernel, Linus
(Torvalds) maintains an official tree, encourages submissions of
changes to him, and makes sure of the quality of the code. He
doesn't do all of this personally, there is a group of people, each
responsible for certain pieces, submissions that are not properly
written, or break other components are either fixed or rejected.

If your going to open source something, then please make it open
source, the open/closed model seems to be growing in popularity, IB
is a perfect example, Borland opened the source so they could get
other people to contribute, but they can keep their changes hidden
(closed), and charge bix bucks for them, read the licence. The
biggest problem with this Open/Closed model, is that it often results
in a code fork, in IB's case the code forked into Firebird, almost
immediately. The purely open Linux Kernel hasn't forked although
it's been around for nearly 10 years.

I haven't used Marathon, although I will download a copy today, I
sincerely hope that in opening the source you don't make the other
mistake that Borland did, they kept all previous versions closed,
with big licence fees.

ybe that is the first step, you need to decide if you want a fully
open source project like the Linux Kernel, open that is open only to
registered users (like IBO), or an Open/Closed model like IB.

Paul







Paul Schmidt,
Tricat Technologies
Email: paul@...
Website: www.tricattechnologies.com