But that is the beauty of open source
From James Robertson:
James Governor sent me this link from the Illuminata blog. Interesting stuff - it looks like IBM has been doing a bait and switch move with some of their software. Have a look at the Easy400 site that Illuminata points to - it makes it clear that all software available there is under an OSS license. Here's what it says:
This Easy400 site fully complies with the Open Source criteria. In the following text, "Easy400 software" means any piece of software distributed from this Easy400 site.
That all sounds fine, until you get to this, which explains the problem. No comment from IBM, of course - this sounds pretty ugly to me. It would be nice to have IBM explain it, but they are taking the all too common "heads down, this will blow over" approach. I think I said something about that earlier today :)
Is the complaint here that IBM is reneging on an Open Source license ( no evidence of that in the links that I can see) which would be bad, bad, bad....
or is it that they are no longer supporting it? If so, then , as its Open Source, the customers can use it, change it themselves, form a co-operative to do it, or perhaps an enterprising young programmer will offer a support service........
If it weren't Open Source, then that would be game over - I hope Cincom open source one of their Smaltalk's when they stream line down to one !