Corvus, your usually the _first_ person to throw a tengenital stone. Throwing things tangenitally is the best way to hit unusual and unexpected topics (or targets).

*eltrohc* Guilty as charged!

Anyway… as someone who has yet to create something or value, I’ve always struggled with the ideas and implementations of open vs closed source. I like the ideals of open work, and its innate ability to build community and momentum around itself. However, there is always the fear of losing something close and personal when unscrupulous people find your material interesting enough to steal. It’s a hard line to walk when the world remains fraught with ethical pitfals.

Marcus, I’m the last person to throw the tangential stone around here.

Our situation is this — our product and art assets are going to be open source. Because they’re of my design and I say so. Fortunately, I’m just self interested enough that I’m willing to work with Wayne and Rachel to ensure we’ll still be able to turn a profit. We’ve hit on a solution that we feel will work well. We ought to have a long conversation about that at some point, eh?

The flaming socialist in me has all sorts of solutions, but the pragmatic ( and sometimes greedy ) business person wants to horde and protect and tell the Open Source community to take a leap. We are lucky in our company, we’ve got an open source zealot and a paranoid android, and I fall in the middle. We have found a happy middle ground that works for us quite well. And isn’t that what it is all about? Finding the middle path?

This was a bit tangental, but not by much.