On Saturday, Jan 24, 2004, at 18:13 US/Pacific, D. Jay Newman wrote: > It seems that fixes come more quickly to > Linux (open-source) than to Windows (closed-source). > > Also, the open-source community admits to and fixes problems more > rapidly than most close-source sources. > > Except when they refuse to admit that they have a bug. I understand that there is some VERY questionable logic in the current Linux ARP code, and the relevant developer simply refuses to admit that it should be changed. Since there is effectively no way to apply market pressure to free software, it might never get changed. Assorted vendors are cringing about how much THEY are likely to have to spend to 'support' this quirk that won't go away... The things going on (or not going on) with the Jal compiler since it was made open source are mildly amusing as well. And there are the lovely version to version incompatibilities in famous packages like emacs. Sometimes solved by fragmentation into several separate "products." Open source is a fine thing, but it doesn't solve all problems. It also isn't new. Universities and such were sharing source code for all sorts of stuff long before the 8086 even existed... It does raise some interesting Intellectual Property issues. If code is copyrighted and/or trade secret, I am free to "clean room" reproduce similar code (like an IBMPC BIOS, as a popular item) if I can reasonably demonstrate that I never studied, stole, or otherwise used the code i am 'reverse engineering.' Accused of violating GPL by including open source (GPL'ed) code, I would likely have a very difficult time indeed demonstrating that I had never looked at the relevant open source code. I'm not a big fan of the GPL ("if you include any GPL code, your code must also be GPL'ed.") We have a legal team that has to oversee and approve every use of open source code in our products. Somehow, I think paying lawyers big bucks instead of paying programmers big bucks was NOT what even RMS had in mind. Sigh. BillW -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.