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Agreed: don't hate on Sun or single-vendor FOSS in generalAgreed: don't hate on Sun or single-vendor FOSS in generalPosted Jul 27, 2008 6:14 UTC (Sun) by robla (subscriber, #424)In reply to: the historical important of Sun's open source play by zooko Parent article: Anticipating the sunset Regarding "big" companies that release products that are still important to them: I do have to put in the obligatory plug for the Second Life viewer here (since I work for Linden Lab). We released the source code for that at a time when we were darlings of the media. However, I'll grant you that we probably don't qualify as "big" (still privately held). I'll also grant you that it's vanishingly rare. I've also been very troubled by just how much handwringing there is about whether single-vendor open source is a good thing. There is way too much well-tested, widely-deployed, general-purpose software out there that is currently proprietary. I really hope this community doesn't turn it's nose up at it in a fit of "not invented here". I recently wrote about this general topic on Advogato in much greater depth. With respect to Sun in particular, they've been great friends to our community (especially lately). I have to think we want more companies to do what they have done, which is at least try to make publishing open source software into a winning business proposition. If Sun fails, fewer companies will try to do what they've done. More importantly, dollars that would have been invested in open source development will probably be invested in proprietary software development (and proprietary marketing) instead.
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