[kwlug-disc] the intertoobz never forget

[Bob Jonkman]

Chris Frey wrote:
> Sharing changes back to the community is a cost cutting measure.
> The more you use FOSS, and the more changes you make, the more
> of a headache maintaining your own little version will be.
>
> I think it's a self-correcting problem, in many ways.
>
> - Chris
>   

Do you mean that making and maintaining changes in isolation is 
expensive, but making changes, contributing them back and then having 
the community maintain the changes is less expensive? 

I can see the benefit in the latter.  There is benefit in the former 
only if the changes kept secret earn more income than the cost of the 
maintenance.

I think that part of the problem of companies not contributing their 
changes back to the community is that those companies prize their 
Intellectual Property of the code too highly.  Which is why they want 
patents, so that other companies with clever programmers aren't allowed 
to make the same changes.  <sigh>

--Bob.