At 2001-05-06 11:03 +1000, Patrick O'Keeffe wrote:

>Hi Jason,
>
> > Why do you say Trustware is "closed"? Anyone who wishes to participate in
> > the development of the product gets the full source and there is no
>charge.
> >
> > Where are the disadvantages in this?
> >
> > The only thing it doesn't allow that Open Source does is forking.
>
>This is important - That's the good thing about open source - it allows
>forking. It hardly ever happens, but if you need to or things aren't going
>in the direction that you'd like you can if you want to.

I think that's a very important point that is often overlooked, not
considered, or simply not understood. It bears repetition that _forking
hardly ever happens_ because there are strong disincentives to doing so.

What "Open Source" would probably not provide, that "Trustware" probably
would, is significant direct income in an analogous way to closed source
products. So, it seems to me that when someone says "Trustware" provides
the right "structure" for Marathon, they really mean to say that dollars
will be more easily forthcoming through being able to monopolise the
distribution. Whether such people see that as primarily a personal gain, or
a gain for Marathon, I wouldn't know.


David Trudgett