developer declaration of idenpendence

[anubis]

sometimes i believe people who write sommething and then give it titles like : "the developer declaration of independence" must live somewhere between here and mars. this paper, while i'm not talking about wether i agree with them or not, calls for open standards and propagates that openstandards and the freedom of the developer can only be achieved by getting rid of the "monopolistic tendencies" of the big software companies.
what's the problem you ask ? well, let's take a look at who is a member of the open group that released that exact paper. names that jump the eye are : IBM, Novell, Oracle and Sun. Even the SCO group. Yes, even the vole itself. for these companies every patent and every secret they own is a liscence to print money. so i get the impression that some hippies in the open group celebrate their comittment to the free flow information while it's actuall members sit in the background, silently laughing

[Ed Mack]

I thought the real stumbling block was getting shelf exposure for indies (as well as coping with demanding work).. the community overall is quite open IMHO.. of course Half-Life2's makers will keep secrets, but isn't that their competitive edge?

I'm wondering If I missed the point of your post..

[anubis]

my point is that i feel that there is a "slight" discrepance between what the OpenGroup stands for and what it propagates and on the other hand what it's members stand for

[Mihail121]

I think that Sun shoudn't be messed here 'cause most of their work is INEED free. This includes the J2SE, J2ME, all the specifications and documentation plus the online books and etc.

In the same time it's no harm for anybody that Solaris and J2EE are paid cause they're pretty proffesional tools anyhow.

For the rest, i agree.

[dustin]

There is a big difference between a company and the people who work for the company. So while some of those companies may be closed-fisted money grubbers, I am sure that the employees who are working on the open stuff really do agree with what they preach.

[NomadRock]

Ed has got a serious point. We cannot declare independence because we need them. The founding fathers could live self sufficiently in their new world. We need hardware designers and fabricaters, and as much as we may detest them we need the marketing people. It is folly to declare independence from that which we are hopelessly dependent on.