My fiscal responcibility to my company ver. Open Source - advice please

[Madison Kelly]

Lloyd Budd wrote:
> 
> On 21-May-04, at 20:41, Paul DiRezze wrote:
> 
>> Another link that may be of use.
>>
>> http://news.com.com/Open-source+companies+see+profit+aplenty/2100 
>> -7344_3-5216387.html?tag=nl
> 
> 
> That is fantastically poor journalism ... or I should say
> standard journalism .
> 
> It does not talk about profitability other than hand waving .
> 
> The MySQL vise-chief marketeer Zack Urlocker provides
> quite the 'sound' bite , "There's always going to be grassroots
> people... who see open source as a free ride" .
> 
> Like many , Zack Urlocker , also presents confusing
> information about licensing .  I can modify GPL software
> (within fair use) without distributing the resulting source ,
> as long as I do not distribute , or copy (outside of fair use)
> the software .  Entity law seems like where distribute and
> copy may becoming interesting ;-)
> 
> Lastly , who considers Novell or IBM ,
> "Open-source companies" ?!
> 
> 
> Speaking out of his .... ,
> Lloyd

   Well, on the IBM/Novell being open-source question, I do. IBM is 
standing up against the first legal challenge to OSS and Novell is 
sticking their neck out to land some nice blows in the same battleThey 
have thus proven that they are players in OSS and thus are, in my mind, 
very much OSS companies (specially Novell).

   I am learning fast that supporting OSS on a professional level 
requires a delicate balance of covering your bottom line and providing 
your share to the community whom you are benefiting from. Novell and IBM 
(and Redhat, etc.) are doing that balancing act nicely.

Madison - Who is still working on an open-source strategy of her own...

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