Joe Sack’s Techdirt Profile

itjoe

About Joe Sack


http://www.linkedin.com/in/josephsack



Joe Sack’s Comments comment rss

  • Jun 10th, 2009 @ 5:54am

    Open Source is Different (as Joe Sack)

    What I usually hear open source programmers complaining about is entirely different from their proprietary counterparts. Proprietary vendors are complaining about people using their software (an infinite resource) without paying for it. Open source programmers are complaining because people are building new software based on open source code without releasing the source. Open source software can usually be re-used and modified for free, with the caveat that the resulting code must also be open source. It's more like a plagiarism issue than a licensing issue. If you're getting a well-developed, tested, and maintained codebase for free, it seems like a small concession that you can't use it to create proprietary software.