Lack of open source shown as negative part of D on Dr. Dobbs

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 09/05/12 21:43, deadalnix wrote:
> Le 09/05/2012 21:19, Nick Sabalausky a écrit :
>> "deadalnix"<deadalnix at gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:jodll6$14eu$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>
>>> I'd that the most important part of FOSS isn't the license but the
>>> process. And we are not here yet.
>>
>> How so?
>>
>
> We have a botleneck in accepting contributions.

To an extent that seems to parallel most projects with a small team of core 
developers -- if you don't have enough people with the right combination of 
expertise, understanding and time commitment, it's difficult to effectively cope 
with the volume of bug reports, feature requests and potential new contributors.

That said, I don't think you can entirely divorce contribution issues from the 
licence.  One of the things that allows FOSS projects to scale effectively is 
that they have multiple distribution channels and (often) multiple partially 
independent development teams.  E.g. if you take the Linux kernel, you have many 
different distros, many of which have internal kernel dev teams; you have 
multiple different ways to get a working copy of the kernel (the kernel.org 
website, your distro of choice, your Android mobile phone, your web host, your 
embedded device ...), all of which create corresponding points of entry for 
contribution.

That spread of 3rd-party distribution and modification _does_ rely on the 
licence, as those suppliers need to be able to freely work on the code without 
needing to go through a single upstream point of contribution, and they need to 
have certainty that the permission to do so is not conditional or potentially 
able to be rescinded.