Blogging Roller

Ed Burnette: If you really want to ensure true freedom of your code, put it under the control of a Foundation like Apache or Eclipse. Foundations are not controlled by any one company so you can feel comfortable about being on a level playing field with your competitors.

Update: I've gotten a couple of backchannel comments about this post, so I should say that I don't necessarily agree with all quotes I post on my blog. I post quotes representing viewpoints that I find interesting and worthy of consideration.

I do agree with Ed that independent foundations are very important to open source, but I disagree or find fault in some of the rest of his post. For example, Ed seems to imply that GPL is used only by greedy companies. I don't agree with that sentiment at all. Ed also said that foundations can't be bought and (like James) I don't agree with that either. And finally, Ed groups Eclipse Foundation with the Apache Software Foundation and I don't think Eclipse is quite as independent as Apache (and how much does it cost to join Eclipse again?).