[ic] Frustrated with IC 4.8

IC-Admin interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com
Mon Sep 17 20:02:01 2001


On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, JT Justman wrote:

> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "IC-Admin" <interchange@my-school.com>
> To: <interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com>
> Sent: Monday, September 17, 2001 11:16 AM
> Subject: Re: [ic] Frustrated with IC 4.8
> 
> <<snip>>
> 
> > I propose a monthly registration fee to this mailing list to collect
> > money for development and documentation support. I like to know, who would
> > support this idea and what you consider a price, which would reflect the
> > value of help you are getting here.
> >
> > Birgitt Funk
> >
> 
> I would happily make a donation to this list, perhaps even on a monthly
> basis. But a manditory fee seems to be contrary to the spirit of the
> project. I might never have started lurking on this list a year ago if I'd
> had to pay for it. Besides, a set fee might discourage some from making
> larger donations.
> 
> So I am going to start a trend. I will go right now and put $5 in the tip
> jar.
> 
> JT

I appreciate your comment and I match your donation. :-)

But I have an honest question. What is the spirit of this project ? 

This project started somewhere in 1995/96 AFAIK. To my knowledge at that
time the enthusiasm about the potential of the internet was
rosy and overwhelming. E-commerce was just envisioned as the big
money maker by many a people and developers jumped on the task to
develop many "closed source code" applications in that area. 

Free software had barely entered in the conscience of the general
software user, aside from the ones, who were affiliated in some way or
another to the  the older *nix generations,  who worked in that
environment since the eighties. 

If there was a spirit in this project than to me it seemed it was 
the determination to keep the source code of this software open, in the
sense of being readable and downloadable for anyone, who wanted to use it
and "play" with it. For most people that also meant that the download
of that software wouldn't cost a penny. 

I think it didn't mean any thing more than that. I have to admit that also
the mailing list, since it existed, was never put in question to be
anything else than be free of charge. Does that mean, one has to
keep that written in stone ? 

I don't think that to charge for the mailing list would violate the most
important "spirit" of this project, which is nothing but keeping a
program's source code open and readable to anybody. That is especially
important for a typical e-commerce application, because this software is
very clearly a tool to save and to make money, for clients and for
consultants as well.  

It is simply clear that this software will be used by people who
basically shouldn't even try to use it on their own, because of its
potential cost savings, be it that you are the very enduser and
merchant or be it, that you are a consultant. 

If both these groups are able to make money (or at least to save money
compared to all other options out there), then I don't see, why a small
registration fee for this mailing list would make such a big difference
and change the "spirit" of this project. All this of course, I write,
under the assumption, that further development or maintenance of
the current package would be endangered, because of too few seals of
the Red Hat's commercial package and technical support contracts.

The "spirit" of this project would be violated, IMHO, if the source
code would ever be closed, not if the code would ever cost money. 

I would be willing to pay a price for that "freedom", or I would
just call it "transparency", as that is to me the real only
important aspect of OSS. It's not the price, it's the possibility
to go and read the source code for anybody who wants to do it.

Birgitt Funk