RE: [PHP4BETA] Professional PHP by Schumann

> I don't think all software should be open/free. I think that > opensource is > a cool idea that's great for development, but it's not a religion. > Opensource comes with NO strings attached. It encouraged commercial > companies to use it. If the real intention was 'well, you can use it for > free, but we'd really expect all of the software you make to also > be free', > its acceptance would be much smaller, and it would still be a renegade, > fanatics-only movement. Today it isn't, and IMO, it's a good thing. I agree that OpenSource comes with no strings attached. Meaning Open software is Open software. Whether you make your products open or not. I never said Amazon should not be allowed to use Apache or PHP. I really am not so religious as to say I won't use amazon because they don't open their code. I simply think they should be boycotted because of the patent. If there was an Open alternative to Amazon I would however use them instead of anyone else regardless. :) > Software patents suck, from what I understand about them. It's a new > trend, and I believe that if Amazon hadn't done it, someone else would > have, and perhaps that's what they were afraid of. I think that it's not > Amazon that's to be blamed, it's the law that allows software patents to > even exist. Software patents are BAD! I agree we should be combatting the law as well. However, I question your philosphy here. As Amazon is exploiting the law. Example: Guns are lethal weapons. If I buy a gun and kill someone with it. Whom should be prosecuted? Me or the gun manufacturer or both? As after all its the guns fault. If it did not exist I couldn't have used it. Plus if I didn't shoot that guy someone else could have got a gun and done it. Hopefully that analogy explains. :) > >And quite frankly I am ashamed to say I compromise in situations > where there > >is not an OpenSource alternative. > > Why are you ashamed? Taking opensource to this religious extent makes no > sense. If there's a much better commercial alternative, I see no reason > not to use it, unless you actually need the source code. If the > opensource > alternative is almost as good it's perhaps worth missing some features > (since they'll most likely get added anyway), but otherwise, > IMHO, it's not. Cuz Im wierd like that. :) Derek Neighbors DFC, Inc. http://developers.forchrist.com dneighbors@forchrist.com