Re: Companies Contributing to Open Source

> > > > The community could learn a great deal from adopting some of the more
> > > > common business practices when it comes to development as well.
> > > >
> > > > In short, I guess I think it is important to recognize that both are
> > > > partners in the open source world and that to ignore one over the other
> > > > is destined to fail.
> > > Do you have any statistical data to back that hypothesis?
> >
> > Of which, the community learning or my take that if we ignore one over
> > the other it is destined to fail?
>
> This actually brings up an important distinction. Joshua is saying that
> the community is painted as "god" in the article, and I agree there is a
> basis for that, but I don't think you can consider the community and
> company as equals either.

I can agree with that.

> I remember the president of Great Bridge
> saying that the company needs the community, but not visa-vera --- if
> the company dies, the community keeps going (as it did after Great
> Bridge, without a hickup), but if the community dies, the company dies
> too.

I 95% agree here. If EDB or CMD were go to down in flames, it could hurt
the community quite a bit. It isn't that the community wouldn't go on,
but that it would definitely negatively affect the productivity of the
community for "n" amount of time.

> Also, the community is developing the software at a rate that
> almost no other company can match, so again the company is kind of in
> toe if they are working with the community process. For example, the
> community is not submitting patches for the company to approve.

Agreed.

>
> I do think I need to add a more generous outreach to companies in the
> article, explaining how valuable they are to the community, so let me
> work on that and I will post when I have an update.

Cool, that is what I was really looking for.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>
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