Re Security
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Originally Posted by wreck
TBH, if you believe that you can trust a closed source vendor with making highly secure products you have never used a Microsoft OS. I work for a company who does network security products. If it weren't for Microsoft we'd be out of totally business
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I did't say closed source was more secure than open source. I said commercial, see:
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Originally Posted by Unbelievable
Ironically, in some way's the commercial nature of previous versions provided some reassurance.
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Re Commercial open source
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Originally Posted by wreck
I was just pointing out that being open is perfectly viable for commercial software.
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Sure there's plenty of examples of commercial open source projects but that's not the point. Carbonite is in the middle of an unusual transition. How many commercial enterprises are told they must comply with an imposed set of strict regulations that force their code to suddenly shift from commercial closed source to something along the lines of open source freeware, with limitations on how to market their product while simultaneously losing a major way to communicate any form of sales pitch within the intended environment? I can think of exactly 0.
CBC may yet go the SVN route. It may yet prove to be a cost saving panacea. But it might also severely limit what CBC do with Carbonite later.
Now really isn't a great time to mess about sorting out an SVN, with all the implications that has for protecting CBC's intellectual property, not just from being stolen but from being sabotaged via plagerised code submissions (remember, there's an awful lot of hate out there - check official forums re the new UI policy and see where fingers are pointing). I.E. maintaining sole copyright becomes a non-trivial activity. This doesn't matter so much if you plan to stay open source, because you've can always fall back on "sorry, it was a 3rd party submission that somehow slipped under the radar" and remove it.
However, what if Blizzard break Carbonite hopelessly, outlaw it or make it redundant? Or what if CBC's new (blizzard imposed) business model fails? It stands to reason that CBC would want to take it's code, port it to a different MMO (one who's owners recognise copyright holders legal rights to distribute their own creations how they see fit): The closed source model option re-surfaces.
It's relatively easy to move from closed source to open source, but it's most certainly not as easy to move from free open source back to paid-for closed source, what with large chunks of code floating around. Even if you close the SVN, there's going to be unofficial mirrors out there to deal with. And any 3rd party dodgey SVN code becomes a serious liability should it's ownership ever be brought into question.
To me it seems like a lot of hassle for CBC, for relatively little gain, especially right now when they're still working out if donations are enough to keep Carbonite viable
Apologies if I'm not making sense or seem rabid - I've been up all night
