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Re: Cygwin participation threshold



Christopher Faylor writes:
 > It is interesting that you felt this way at first.  I wonder if the reason
 > has anything to do with the name "Cygwin" which sounds so similar to "Cygnus".
 > 
 > The reason I am saying this is because hundreds of people have contributed to
 > the linux project and *many* companies make money from linux.

Actually I think you've hit on a major issue. Even though Cygnus makes
cygwin available as sourceware it is obviously a Cygnus
product. Cygnus controls the feature set. Design decisions are made by
Cygnus. People can contribute but Cygnus is the final arbitor on
design decisions and even code style.

With gcc it is different. Cygnus is the official maintainer but the
perception is that Cygnus acts more as a custodian for FSF and the
free software community. FSF owns the copyright. Redhat is another
example. Redhat doesn't own Linux. RPM is the only significant thing
that RedHat copyrights and even that makes people nervous.

On the other hand Cygwin is obviously branded. Even the mailing list
is controlled by Cygnus. The developers mailing list access is
restricted by Cygnus engineers. The official Cygwin web page is
controlled by Cygnus. The bug list is an internal Cygnus system.

Psychologically it doesn't make me feel like I would count as much as
a Cygnus engineer if I contributed. Helping Cygnus with their free
software product doesn't have the same cachet as helping Linus Torvald
with his. Linus stands first among equals partners. How can I feel
like an equal partner to a company?

I guess the issue is not companies making money on free
software. Instead the issue is companies being perceived as
controlling the software development.

Tcl is entering the same delicate state. With Ousterhout starting
Scriptics which is now the official distributor of the release people
are beginning to get nervous. The question always hovers "will
Scriptics pull Tcl in and make it a commercial product?" TclPro is
$1000 a seat. What if new development or the good extensions only
appear in TclPro? Nobody begrudges Ousterhout's right to make money on
his major contribution but still there is anxiety.

I don't envy Cygnus as it tries to walk this tightrope.

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