Re: [Fsfe-uk] Mac OS X refund

[Andrew Savory]

Hi,

On 1/24/08, Neil Darlow <address@hidden> wrote:
> Which doesn't paint a rosy picture for the future of CUPS under Apple's
> ownership. A pity for CUPS now being de-facto for many distributions.
>
> The same fate could await MySQL under its new owner, Sun Microsystems,
> despite their contributions to free/open source software. In that event
> we have a saviour on PostgreSQL, at least.
>
> I applaud commercial contributions to free software but I can't help
> thinking that the acquisition of existing projects by commerce results
> in long-term damage to them - my opinion only.

Which brings up an interesting question - are there any clear examples
of FLOSS that has thrived under commercial ownership? (For example,
the BerkleyDB folks when I spoke to them last year seemed extremely
pleased with how things were working out under Oracle.)

And similarly, are there specific examples of FLOSS that has knowingly
been killed by new commercial owners? Seems to me this could make some
useful reference material for those looking to "sell out" in the
future.


A.