Re: Oracle sucks!

henryl_at_bengaldevelopment.com (Henry Lafleur) wrote in message news:<30f1a81b.0305010609.4a3fbbdb_at_posting.google.com>...
> > Ah, but that will not create a compatibility problem like
> > the one you mentioned above between the "standards"?
>
> No it won't. Perhaps you don't follow Open Source, but open source
> projects tend to gravitate toward standards, not away from them. And
> I'm talking about changing optimization parameters at compile time,
> not changing standards compliance.

This is negative gravity. The open source community has explicitly recognized the problem and taken steps to ameliorate it. For example, Linus being the benevolent dictator, and the projects to bring the fragmenting linux back together.

If left to itself, open source will severely fragment.

What remains to be seen is how the entire life cycle works. In proprietary software, at some point the vendor says "this product is stable" (read "obsolete") in order to push the next big thing. We all scream, and then go on with our lives, grumbling. Open source cannot say that, so at some point the economically motivated will go away leaving the old dedicated volunteers to try to keep things moving until they die, causing both severe fragmentation of the code base and leaving some customers hanging out to dry.

jg

--
_at_home.com is bogus.
So like, whatever happened to comp.unix.advocacy, anyways?