Dovecot Oy merger with Open-Xchange AG

[Bernd Petrovitsch]

On Mit, 2015-04-01 at 13:07 +0200, Reindl Harald wrote:
> Am 01.04.2015 um 13:04 schrieb Bernd Petrovitsch:
> > IMHO the larger the corporation is, the less are the chances for
> > *long-term* benefits of the OSS/free software (mainly because: usually
> > commercial success is driven and defined from marketing to sales[1] sown
> > to the techies which are forced into "features" and "delivery dates" to
> > achieve some "company defined goal" - and that is usually not "bug
> > free", "safe", or the like. Free software/OSS just happens that *at
> > least* half of it should come from the "working level" and that is - at
> > least - much more - ahemm - "inconvenient" for sales people)

FWIW the context were large "old-school" corps (like Novell or Oracle)
taking over free software companies.

> that is simple not true - if it would be true linux distributions would 

Define "true Linux distribution".

> not include half baken and aplha quality sofwtare again and again in 
> stable releases because "the market out there"

That's everywhere in the commercial world the problem with "delivery vs
quality/known problems" and someone's decision to ship or not to ship -
based in whatever feels appropriate.

BTW typical Linux distributions package some else's software and
(almost) everyone knows that (and do not blame the distro for shipping
buggy software - is there actually any bug-free software?;-).

And it depends on
- the package (core package like kernel, gcc, perl, apache-http, ...)
  vs some exotic application (the n+1.th text editor, MUA, ...).
- the bug in question - is that stuff unusable or happens the bug only
  if you do crazy creative stuff on files with 6+GB size or 1000k lines?
And usually distros run bug tracking and (try to) get bugs fixed - in
house or upstream.

> the *possible* long-term benefits are more time to invest because a 
> fixed income

If the free software is the core business, it is not a problem (and
these are not the companies in the discussion).

Kind regards,
	BErnd
-- 
"I dislike type abstraction if it has no real reason. And saving
on typing is not a good reason - if your typing speed is the main
issue when you're coding, you're doing something seriously wrong."
    - Linus Torvalds