On Saturday 11 July 2009, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 10:52 AM, jtdjtd@mtnl.net.in wrote:>
Who cares if RH (or any other commercial entity) sank like a stone to the bottom of the sea. The business world is littered with the corpse of yesteryear's most valued companies. I was just reading this
Yeah, I understood the context of your comment from your last reply, so I was wrong in quoting you on it. And as for whether commercial entities matter, a majority of projects that matter are heavily funded/enabled by these corporations. Them sinking will not matter to the business world as such but will make a big difference to FOSS contributions.
IMO not at all. The ones who sink vacate that biz space and free up resources. They are replaced very quickly with new ones. We had Hayes and US robotics. They were replaced with a 100 others.
I am exactly in sync with your other mail about FOSS being a different way of doing things and cant be compared to closed software systems.
However I take it one step further and say FLOSS principles applies equally to rules of business, especially for FLOSS companies. Hiding under legal jargon to create a business is suicide.
Having said the above, IMO RH is most unlikely to ever sue any organisation / individual for copying, redistributing and installing- they will collapse from the backlash. But then we do have idiots like the MPAA and RIAA and one can never predict the future.