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From: Aaron Bartell
Have I convinced you to donate anything yet? :-)
No. As an individual programmer myself, I have fundamental issues against open source. GPL v3 in particular essentially removes all rights from original authors and places them in the public domain. Intellectual property rights intrinsically have much more value than individual domain experience and programming skill. The open-source movement removes that value from the individual and places it it the public domain. Ironically, individual programmers fall into the trap of donating under the pressure of soft-peddled promotional hype and the lure of being a part of a widely reaching endeavor.
It appears that for every successful open-source project in sorceforge there are a thousand failed. Sourcefore has become a veritable boneyard of all-but-abandoned and neglected projects.
Consider the appeal of the argument that programmers may look forward to $xxx hourly rates if they donate their intellectual property to a public repository. You should read the widespread moaning that has erupted at linkedin right now over an offshore firm offering $14 hourly rates for programmers with IBM i JDE experience. I empathize with most of the moaning.
I strongly believe that intellectual property rights for original authors and creators are fundamental to advancing the quantity and quality of new creative works, and that the open-source movement is hobbling more than helping creativity. You confirmed yourself that RPG based open-source projects have fundamental unresolved issues. Consider Mihael Schmid's JSON procedures. It took me less than an hour of looking at the code to realize that I would never use it in a Web application. It dynamically rebuilds and destroys the complete data model in memory prior to streaming it for both input and output for every request-response cycle. I'd never add that kind of overhead to my applications. But you latched onto it, and gung-ho promoted it, evidently because it was offered under GPL v3.
You could spend thousands of hours donating code to open source projects and never get anything out of it other than a few public accolades from a handful of people. Most beneficiaries of your donations wouldn't even offer their complements except for encouragement to motivate you to donate more. Most beneficiaries would appropriate your code and incorporate into their own private toolkits without contributing back. Some would even remove your copyright statements and insert their own.
One of the unfortunate realities of the world is that there is widespread desire to get something for nothing as opposed to quid pro quo, and the open-source movement fosters and promotes that type of culture.
Notwithstanding the negativity of open-source culture, I have profound respect for original authors and support their rights to do anything with their works, including their right do donate to public repositories.
Nathan.
midrange.com
