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Story: Sun 'distorts' definition of free software

Posted by: Arthur B. (Sunday 3 July 2005, 2:12 AM)

There's another aspect of Open that seems to be overlooked here. It is not so much the customers right to have access to the Source that makes the difference (as others have pointed out most customers wouldn't know what to do with it anyway) but rather the fact that whole developer communities have access to the same Source.

That means that the "vendor" of an Open Source product is always on trial. They can't hide behind API's. If there's a problem within the Source it's bound to be found. As are needed improvements. Flaws are more easily discovered and fixed. Add-ons can really "get in" rather then being restricted to some sort of half deaf translator with a hidden agenda. And most importantly, should some Open Source products contain code that doesn't agree with current customer market demands (e.g.: perhaps the code more agrees with the internal commercial business goals of the vendor in question) then it will be identified, ripped out and replaced by code that does meet current customer market demands sooner or later.

Now that's service and support you simply can't buy because such service and support isn't provided, it's given.