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[FYI] May the Source Be With You



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May the Source Be With You  

Maybe One Key to Strengthening Open Source is Just Differentiating 
Between Work and Play  

By Robert X. Cringely  

Was it something I said? Last week, I wrote about ways in which Open 
Source development might be vulnerable to both external subversion by 
a motivated competitor, and to what I claimed was an inevitable 
deceleration of software projects into which no money is being 
poured. But what got me in trouble with so many readers weren’t these 
ideas, but my use of the word “nobodies,” referring to Open Source 
software stars in the making. This wasn’t meant to be offensive. It 
simply represented my belief that until you are “somebody” in any 
field, you are nobody. I know I was. Some people think I still am.  

Semantics aside, this week I proposed to take the other side of the 
argument -- that Open Source is here to stay. And of course it is, in 
that nobody is trying to make it illegal to give away software. But 
will Open Source be as big a factor 20 years from now as it is today? 
It can be, I think, if Open Source remains true to its roots -- that 
is if we can even remember them.  

[...]

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