Q-FUNK provide us with thought about using prioprietary technologies to defend open source and open standards.

I have myself some other examples:

  • willing to sell a webmail solution that requires IE/Windows to use when the whole engineering of the Linux based product runs Linux...
  • or providing valuable information to engineering using Flash (and we all know how flash support is broken on Linux because of the proprietary nature of the technology).

But that is just internal business of privately held companies providing proprietary software solutions based on Linux (remember, you don't need open source your application if it runs on Linux), even if they pretend to be open source friendly.

Whenever you make business based on Open Source software, you should also think longterm about the Open Source ecosystem. These examples of bad management (yes they are bad management, but one of the options was not taken).

It like w3quebec meetings that requires Flash to be viewed online. One of their goal is to defend the w3c standard for the web, and to get the recordings of their proceeding you have to use the technology that hurt the most the open principile of the Web: platform independence and openness. There is a large debate in the FACIL mailing list on that matter.

Maybe I should just stop ranting and return to my code. (some STL crack)