Andrew Savory a.savory@btinternet.com writes:

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(That's the new technology bit. It's innovation.)

Not our innovation. That's the point I was making: why are we trying to implement theirs ahead of our own?

Oh, that's just daft. Talk about "Not Invented Here". If it's good, use it. If it's not, don't.

NIH has nothing to do with this. If it's proven to be good, then use it and shout about it from the rooftops. There's not even much harm with quietly exploring implementation for ourselves. Until then, we've got our own innovations to promote and shouldn't be wasting our energy doing their marketing department's work for them.

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Making a big noise before these projects have started is just *begging* to be knocked back.

For sure, but look how much noise the Gnome and KDE lot make.

And look at the lumps Gnome took for too much PR too early. KDE were actually quite quiet until they had something half-working. Gnustep are like church mice just now.

[...] I think that along with Open Source should be an open mind -- all too often people tend to discard good ideas just because they came from dubious sources.

No, dubious licensing. That viral shared source licence is a really nasty trick, I think. I also care more about Freedom than Openness.

If Microsoft is making a noise about something that we've all been doing in similar ways for years, or making a noise about some fantastic new innovation, why not steal their thunder by offering an Open Source alternative?

Why not, indeed?