[topicmapmail] Ontopia goes open source

[Alexander Johannesen]

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 20:21, Lars Marius Garshol
<larsga at garshol.priv.no> wrote:
> It's worth remembering that this is actually the scenario in which
> most open source projects work. Linux, for example, works like this.

If you mean Linux the Kernel (AKA GNU/Linux), then it's GPLed and
trademarked by Linus, and has no central authority apart from the
*person*, whom a lot of people choose to trust. If you mean Linux as
in a distribution, then there's plenty of models to follow, from
business RedHat down to FreeLinux which is a couple of mates, and
anything in between, and people can choose what suits them best. We,
on the other hand, are currently in the hands of Bouvet (a single
for-profit company), so we're anxious about what they choose to do, of
course.

> All of the other open source Topic Maps projects follow
> this model.

"All" is a huge misnomer. There's as many different models as there
are open source projects.

> I don't understand how following the default open source model (that
> is, not having a foundation) would mean that people contributing to
> the Ontopia project would be donating their contributions to Bouvet.
> If you really think this is the case I think you should explain why.

The fear is that Bouvet, which is a for-profit company, can, in its
profits-driven nature, choose to do things to the project at any time,
as we've seen happen to things like MySQL and BOSS, and a lot of
people have gotten very pissed off with the companies shifting the
value of lots of peoples time and resources around as they please. It
can seriously break a community in little pieces (in a bad way), so
obviously some of us are wary of a situation where a company owns the
right to whatever work we put in. A foundation would solve that
tension and uncertainty, set up in the right way.


Regards,

Alex
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