> From: "Geo." 
> "Adam Flinton"  wrote in message
> news:409330.583938{at}harborwebs.com...
>> It would be possible to compare "OSS guys" with
"proprietary guys" & thus
> claim
>> that MS is thus responsible for Oracle products or that Sybase is thus
>> responsible for IBM products etc.

> Doesn't work for me. If one guy writes notebook for MS and one guy writes vi
> for Linux you want me to consider the MS guy part of the group but you don't
> want me to consider the vi guy part of the group.

The key difference is what is known legally as the "master servant
relationship" i.e. the MS person is normally directed to write s/w for
MS (i.e. MS is the master & the bod is the servant). Whereas with OSS
people scratch their own itch.


> Likewise I'm supposed to
> consider the OE team part of the group but not the GAIM folks.

The OE team are the servants of MS. They do as they are directed. The Gaim
folks do what they want to when they want to wrt GAIM. OE is a product
which is sold. GAIM is a piece of software that is freely given.

> Does RH come with a browser, is it part of the distribution? Does the
> browser dev team count the same way for both groups?

Dunno. Are the Mozilla people part of the Windows team? 

> What about printer drivers, MS doesn't write all the printer drivers on the
> W2K CD's but they are certainly part of the product, no?

So if you d/l the same drivers (say an update) from the printer manfacturer
then they too are "part of the product"?

If not then arguably once you've d/l'ed your first patched version (i.e not
"on the CD") then it's no longer "part of the product".

Adam


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