> On Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:17:28 -0300
> Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I don´t agree, no company has done more for Open Source software than
> > Sun (perhaps only Red Hat comes close).
>
> But the whole point of the open source movement is that it doesn't
> need a "company" to do anything "for it". In fact the benefit
> is always the other way round: "companies" -- including Sun, and
> Red Hat -- are parasites on open-source, not contributors.
>
Parasite is IBM, which profits from the Linux kernel but hasn´t open sourced ANY of its crown jewels. (GPL DB2?). Google also profits from the open source world, then releases all its code under non-GPL terms (Chrome comes to mind).
Sun, on the other hand, has opened both the code of OO.o, Java, the Netbeans IDE and the Glassfish Java app. server, all under GPL terms.
Even RMS has talked positively about Sun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlassFish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbeans
Netbeans can be used not only to create Java apps, but code in PHP, Ruby, and more. But I better stop, I´m afraid we´re getting off-topic for this list...
BTW: that open source needs no "company" to "do anything" is a myth. Of course Linux would have progressed on its own without corporate backing, but we´d be running Linux 0.9 by now.
News just in: 75% of Linux code contributed by PAID programmers, on some corporation´s payroll..
75% of Linux code now written by paid programmers http://apcmag.com/linux-now-75-corporate.htm
Again, without Sun´s help in advancing the platform with OpenOffice and open standards, Linux would have never made it to netbooks, or Dell´s Ubuntu preloads, for that matter...
It was McNealy´s vision which anticipated that without a top-notch Microsoft compatible Office suite, Linux and open source software would naver gain ground. In fact, Abiword was until then the best the open source "community" could do. And that was a long way to a full office suite.
I put McNealy´s vision on par with Netscape´s decision to open source the browser, which sparked Mozilla.org and Firefox.
FC