i address that (common) myth in something i posted recently

it's understandable to think that open source means that someone else will take over a project. in practice, that's very rare, but it's why i approve of galleon waiting so long to release the source.

i think he's got the right idea already. get it to where it really shows what it's supposed to do, and then when people look to take it over (actually i really think that's a little paranoid, the larger and more mature the project the larger effort it is to maintain and "compete" with) the project will already have an image that's not easily stolen. if trademark is the issue, you can protect the trademark and keep the source open.

firefox is open and they protect the trademark (and even there it's kind of more than necessary, even if they didn't protect the trademark, and people made crappy versions of ff and called it "firefox" it wouldn't make the project look bad. what makes ff look good is the project itself, not the icon or the name.)

meanwhile internet explorer is always looking for new ways to "protect" itself and it's a (dangerous) piece of crap.

making ff open source protects it from abuse. abuse by aol, who now own netscape (ff is the open source version of netscape) and who have taken over the closed source version and turned it into aol.

and microsoft's "protection" of quickbasic and qbasic worked out really well for the customer and the project, eh? that's why galleon is wise to go open source. to make certain it has more of a future than ms-qb does-

a future more like the one firefox has.