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From: Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen <ohk@tfdt-o.nta.no>
Subject: Re: future of proprietry source code (was: Ada generics are bad)
Date: 1998/04/20
Message-ID: <umqwwck686t.fsf@fabula4-atm.nta.no>#1/1
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References: <Er3npt.4sK@array.ca>
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Organization: Telenor Online Public Access
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,gnu.misc.discuss
Date: 1998-04-20T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Bill Gribble <grib@cs.utexas.edu> writes:

> tb@mit.edu (Thomas Bushnell, n/BSG) writes:
> > tzs@halcyon.com (Tim Smith) writes: 
> > > For large categories of software, the majority of customers don't want,
> > > don't need, and could not make effective use of, source code, whereas one's
> > > competitors could make effective use of it.  As long as that remains true,
> > > a company can, all other things being equal, make more money keeping their
> > > source secret.
> > 
> > Those people STILL have a benefit to source code, which is that there
> > will be a free market for support.  That means that they will be able
> > to get their bugs fixed.
> 
> I believe he's talking about software for embedded computers.  For
> most of the embedded computers out there, there's no way to upgrade
> the software without contracting to make your own CPUs with different
> programs in the on-chip mask ROM.
> 
> In this case, there's no reasonable expectation that the user or any
> third party can actually do *anything* with the source to fix bugs or
> otherwise alter the behavior of the product.  
> 
> Bill Gribble

There is still an adavntage, in that the user may analyze the program
and find out what the system really does, as opposed to what the
documentation claims it does. :-)
Seriously, I have come across cases where reading the documentation
has been much less helpful than looking at the source.