Is really microsoft killing open source

This morning I read this post linked from Ayende’s post. I really does not agree with the author. Open source is a movement where people are happy to use their time to develop solution for everyone, quite often for free, sometimes with more restrictive license (free only for non commercial product) but really noone has the right to say “hey, this MUST be free”.

We must really thanks people for dedicating their precious time to the community, and we cannot blame them for not doing  or stopping that. The original post speak about Lutz Roeder, and the fear for not having reflector free anymore. You can be sad about that, but absolutely, you cannot blame the author for this decision, instead you should thanks him to left reflector free for so long time.

Moreover I do not think that Microsoft is recruiting people from open source world to stop their projects, there is no reason why people should abandon their open source project only because now they work with microsoft, and if they decided to do so, they have the right for doing that. I like instead the idea that Microsoft is recruiting people to make their products better.

The community is a really great stuff, but requires time, and time is a valuable resource for everyone of us. When I was a student I have plenty of free time, now that I work I have really less time to spent, I have family, and moreover I have to make money to pay my bills.

In the end everyone of us should thanks people for dedicating their time to the community and absolutely we cannot blame them if the amount of time decrease or if drop to zero. Community does not mean contract.

alk.

Tags: Community