ImageDisk project is canceled

[Brad Parker]

"Zane H. Healy" wrote:
>>
>>(3) open source bigots who insist that the world should adhere to 
>>their vision of things.  for you and others, it is a polemic 
>>exercise.

[aside: no offense taken or ment by quoting the above.  I actually
agree with it.  but it also made me ponder the bigger question]

It might be slightly unfair to paint all "pro open source" folks
with the same brush.

And 'polemic' has an agressive part to it which I guess I have not seen
here.  Maybe I was not watching for it.

I would just argue that greater good can come from releasing the source
code to pretty much any utility.  Most of the fears/problems I have seen
stated here have not come true in my experience.

Most of the time a small group remains in control of the releases and
incorporates changes as they see fit.  There are rarely "renigade"
branches, but when there are, it's often a good thing, as they add a
feature which at least some constituancy wants.  This rarely turns into
a bad thing.  Generally the good stuff flourishes.

I agree that an author can do as he/she pleases and should always have
that right.  But I'd also say that a community benefits when the source
for their utilities is freely available.  I can site some obvious
examples where not having the source has held back a more-than-willing
community.

Recently an author of a lisp machine emulator got frustrated and
released his un-working code saying he was done and could do no more.
Immediately several other people tried a bunch of things and the whole
project jumped forward in a flurry of activity culminating, several
months later, in *two* different emulators both workinng and running
lisp code.  The two projects helped each other and co-debugged and in
the end made much more progress than any single project would have made.

All I can say is this would not have happened if the author had not
decided to release his code.  As I said before, it's a Zen thing - you
get what you resist.

-brad