At 23:52 17-03-01 EST, Wayne wrote:
>I think that perhaps the HP-3000-L crowd should keep an on-going list of HP
>software products that HP drops and 'should' transfer to the open-source
>world.  Legato makes #2 in the last month or two.

Maybe my previous posting was a bit misleading. I did not mean to "support"
HP's decision to drop Legato (in fact, I don't even know if HP or Legato was
the driving force in this case) or other products. I also doubt that HP or
Legato had or have plans to open-source the obsoleted product(s).

My posting was not meant to make Open Source look as "last resort" for those
products that nobody wants any more. I tried to point out that software that
comes from the Open Source community and spirit does typically not have the
issue of being bound to the "mercy" of a single vendor. Over the last couple
of years I've got the impression that many people seem to think "let's go
with a big name vendor, then we are on the safe side" (like Microsoft, Oracle
or whatever). But it simply puts them "at the mercy" of a single vendor. In
my opinion, it does not buy them the perceived safety. If the vendor is large
enough, he might have no problem with even dropping a larger number of users
or (trying to) force them to another software package, platform, whatever.

The "free" in "freeware" typically comes from "freedom" not "free of charge".

Not being a native English speaker, I can probably not put this in the right
words or context. But there are a couple of papers and articles from the Open
Source community that discuss these aspects in great detail (for example the
online article "The Cathedral and the Bazaar").

Lars (again, not speaking for @hp.com here!)