Читать книгу Linux For Dummies - Richard Blum - Страница 18

Someone who is a volunteer or donates time to a project isn’t necessarily providing a second-rate effort (or only working on weekends and holidays). In fact, any human resources expert will tell you that people who choose to do a job of their own free will produce the highest quality products.

The volunteers who contribute to open source projects are often leaders in their fields who depend on community collaboration to get useful work done. The open source concept is no stranger to the scientific community. The impartial peer-review process that open source projects foster is critical in validating some new feature or capability as being technically correct.

Those who paint the open source community as copyright violators and thieves often misunderstand — or outright ignore — these vital issues. Open source programmers are very proud of their work and are also very concerned about their own copyrights, not wanting their work to be stolen by others — hence licenses such as the GPL. This concern creates an atmosphere with the greatest respect for copyright. Bandits who claim that they’re “just being open source” when they steal other people’s hard work are grossly misusing the term to soothe their own consciences.

Many have also pointed out that if copyright is violated in open source, it’s easy to tell. Watch the news and notice how often large software corporations are convicted of stealing other people’s code and incorporating it into their own work. If the final product is open source, it’s easy for anyone to look and make sure nothing stolen is in it. As you might imagine, tracking down such copyright violations is much more difficult in a closed source scheme.