Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 20:25:23 -0600 From: David Kelly <dkelly@HiWAAY.net> To: Jonathon McKitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: When does it make sense for a company to open-source its code? Message-ID: <200303152025.23590.dkelly@HiWAAY.net> In-Reply-To: <20030315225844.GA72313@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> References: <20030315225844.GA72313@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
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On Saturday 15 March 2003 04:58 pm, Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
>
> The company I work at designs scientific instruments controlled from
> a host PC. That PC has to run Windows right now. However, I am
> being asked to look into porting at least some of the software,
> possibly just the hardware control components, to Linux/Unix.
[...]
> What might be some guidelines to follow to decide what should be made
> open source (BSD license) and what should be binary-only? Could we
> practically do both? If binary-only is becoming widely unacceptable,
> what else could be done to protect our intellectual property?
By _contributing_ the source code to drivers for your hardware to
projects such as FreeBSD you would gain when/if the expert FreeBSD
kernel people happen to look in to your driver and make suggestions. Or
possibly outright fix it for you. The more open your license, the more
likely to benefit from a free fix. The more likely that as FreeBSD
evolves your driver won't be left behind.
Another advantage in releasing your drivers under a BSD license is when
I go looking for FreeBSD hardware the first place I look is for that
which FreeBSD already supports. If you are on that list and your
product meets my needs I'm not going to go beg somebody else to port
their product. I'm not going to attempt porting it myself.
If I'm not mistaken, the I/O hardware for the data collection industry
has pretty much unified and standardized on clones of National
Intruments products? And somehow/someway yours differ?
Would suggest in addition to the hardware drivers that working userland
example code be provided. And under SEE ALSO in the man page for the
driver you could provide a URL ("free" advertising) pointing at the
full pay-for application.
--
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net
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