Well. Uhm. We don't know us well. I guess this needs some clarification.
We're a "15 year old startup" and we're very active with serveral open source projects. Our decision to not open source the project at the early stages is a decision that serves certain goals for us and the project.
First of all, we see some interest in the technical foundation of eZing. We admit it, we don't want to see a lot of forks and other people making profits based on our work while our initial investments are not covered. Yes, we're selfish like that.
The second goal is that we want eZing to stay. Forever if possible. When we look at successful open source projects, we noticed that quite some of them have had a proprietary or at least a protected "childhood". If open sourced at the right moment, a development community can take the momentum and relevance of the software and lead it to heights a single company is not able to.
There are two things that can go wrong: Open source it too early, before the technology is relevant or open source it too late, when the horse is already dead. The approach we choose is of course not a guarantee, but we believe in this approach.
Regarding the review and transparency: We are not willing to limit disclosure of the source code only to security companies or entities like that. We know that trust is not easily earned. If you allow us to dream, then we would - under NDA, see our first goal - disclose the code on a permanent basis to a group of developers that have earned the trust of the community until we finally release it as open source.
We're thankful for your thoughts on this and we would be glad to further discuss solutions so we get eZing off the ground.
Yeah, I don't agree with anything you just said. VLC was free software from day one. FFmpeg was free software from day one. Linux was almost free software from day one (the license was stupid). GNOME was free software from day one. All of GNU was free software from day one. I've covered just a couple of things you probably use all the time.
This doesn't mean you can't work on a prototype before releasing it. Most projects do that. But asking free software developers to sign an NDA isn't going to work. They'll just go off and make a competing free software product.
- OpenOffice / LibreOffice (StarOffice)
- Firefox (with roots at Netscape)
- MySQL
- Blender
- Joomla (Miro)
So, there are samples for both approaches.
Open source superiority discussions from your local "uber enthusiast echo chamber" should stay exactly there. Here's real world calling.
When it comes to your predictions about no developers signing NDAs... With the perspective for an early influence on a product that WILL go open source, I think it is a bold statement to deny the possibility of a group of people taking such a chance.
I am not claiming this is an especially interesting opportunity for hobbyists.
We're a "15 year old startup" and we're very active with serveral open source projects. Our decision to not open source the project at the early stages is a decision that serves certain goals for us and the project.
First of all, we see some interest in the technical foundation of eZing. We admit it, we don't want to see a lot of forks and other people making profits based on our work while our initial investments are not covered. Yes, we're selfish like that.
The second goal is that we want eZing to stay. Forever if possible. When we look at successful open source projects, we noticed that quite some of them have had a proprietary or at least a protected "childhood". If open sourced at the right moment, a development community can take the momentum and relevance of the software and lead it to heights a single company is not able to. There are two things that can go wrong: Open source it too early, before the technology is relevant or open source it too late, when the horse is already dead. The approach we choose is of course not a guarantee, but we believe in this approach.
Regarding the review and transparency: We are not willing to limit disclosure of the source code only to security companies or entities like that. We know that trust is not easily earned. If you allow us to dream, then we would - under NDA, see our first goal - disclose the code on a permanent basis to a group of developers that have earned the trust of the community until we finally release it as open source.
We're thankful for your thoughts on this and we would be glad to further discuss solutions so we get eZing off the ground.