Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again) To : comp.programming From : Rob Thorpe Date : Fri Aug 26 2005 11:12 am Randy Howard wrote: > Chris Sonnack wrote > (in article ): > > > If anything, I believe that as software development achieves its > > rightful recognition in society, if anything, the trend will be > > towards commercialization and applied quality standards and away > > from the idea of "free". > > I think you are quite correct here, as we have discussed this > need for quality standards as in other more established > professions here before. > > I suspect this is the real underlying motive of the 'free' > movement, as they want to prevent this from happening. They > want it to be completely unregulated, with no individual > responsible for anything, but a large 'community' of relatively > anonymous contributors that can't be touched in any legal sense. Most programmers who write free-software seem to be much more interested in quality than those who write proprietry software. I've submitted bug reports on many proprietry programs and recieved no response, or a curt response dismissing it as a personal problem of my setup. I've had this treatment even for companies my employer spends thousands of pounds per year on for "support". I've also submitted many bug reports on free programs and only once not recieved a response. In most case I've recieved a fix. I think a large part of this is that in free/open software the programmer name is on the product. Whereas in proprietry software he/she is most often anonymous. > The cost of being a certified professional in a legitimate field > is very high, and it doesn't meet the basically anti-capitalist > mentality of those involved. Why do people think those involved are necessarily anti-capitalist? Anyway, it's not necessarily costly. It isn't costly to be a certified EE for example. .