Safe as Milk

7 Responses

1. nona Says:
   October 6th, 2007 at 5:43 am

   Maybe that’s how it should be? Maybe the developers _are_ the product?

2. knipknap Says:
   October 6th, 2007 at 8:33 am

   I can’t see how the ownership of the software changed. Where is that announcement?

3. Peteris Krisjanis Says:
   October 6th, 2007 at 10:57 am

   Dave, I think you overestimate importance of Chris and guys. Sure, they have started all thing, but nevertheless, Gstreamer is much, much, *much* bigger than just Fluendo now. Just take a visit to gst-devel list or gstreamer channel.

4. Justin Mason Says:
   October 6th, 2007 at 11:03 am

   Hi Dave —

   the answer is “yes”. 😉

   As far as I can tell, a commercial company can effectively acquire (or at least neutralise) a GPLed product by hiring its key developers. I guess the fate of GStreamer now depends on how generous Collabora are…

5. Matthew Berg Says:
   October 6th, 2007 at 2:47 pm

   Justin – the fate of the software continues to depend as much as it ever did on the key developers. No change there. But even that is disingenous. If an open source project ceases to serve the community (or simply falls stagnant) anyone can take up development.

   Look at Inkscape, which forked from Sodipodi, which forked from Gill. Or the current X.org team, which split off from the original XFree86 project. Or the fork and eventual remerge of EGCS from the official GNU project. Or the Firefox branch of the Mozilla which eventually supplanted the original suite (and the current Seamonkey branch which revives the concept). Or the various BSDs, each of which serves a different segment. Or (on a meta level) the various derivatives of Red Hat (e.g. Mandrake) and Debian (e.g. Ubuntu). Or the various forks (NeoOffice, Lotus Symphony Suite) or refinements (go-oo) of the OpenOffice.org suite.

   In short, the ultimate fate of GStreamer rests on one thing – people using it. Because it is an integral part of key applications, it’s unlikely the project will be wanting for willing contributor and it’s unlikely that distributors would stand by idly and watch it bitrot into obsolescence.

6. Antoine Says:
   October 6th, 2007 at 5:26 pm

   Hi Dave,

   How are you doing ? 🙂
   I think this is rather good news actually, because now the fate of gstreamer depends on two companies rather than only one.

   cheers

   Antoine.

7. Safe as Milk » Blog Archive » GStreamer, Fluendo and Collabora Says:
   October 8th, 2007 at 10:34 am

   […] Safe as Milk Dave Neary’s view of the world « links for 2007-10-05 […]

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