On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Steve Greenland wrote: > On 22-Mar-00, 18:08 (CST), Eric Sherrill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Thus there could exist a pseudo-secret distro, given only to one's > > friends or sold to select customers, that the author never finds out > > about, simply through its obscurity. > > But the value of the changes made to such a distribution are probably > low. The whole free software development model is based on have lots of > people use, evaluate, and fix programs.
A pseudo-secret distribution wouldn't stay secret for a long period of time, anyway. Every customer would have the right to distribute the whole thing to anybody else (including public ftp sites), effectively making the changes public. Sooner or later, at least one of the customers will do so unless they have a very compelling reason (which may not be included in the license) not to. Remco -- rd1936: 2:05am up 7 days, 7:25, 12 users, load average: 1.56, 1.51, 1.55
