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Communications

Cell Phone Cost Calculator Killed In Canada 214

inject_hotmail.com writes "Internet and law genius Michael Geist writes about some shenanigans by the cell phone carriers and the Canadian government in his column in The Star. Canadian taxpayers funded a 'Cell Phone Cost Calculator' so that the average person could theoretically wade through the disjointed and incongruent package offerings. The calculator wound up being yanked a couple weeks before launch. Geist suggests that the major cell carriers lobbied the appropriate public officials to have the program nixed because it would bite into their profit if the general public could make sense out of pricing and fees. Geist continues, 'Sensing that [Tony] Clement (Industry Minister) was facing pressure to block the calculator, Canadian consumer groups wrote to the minister, urging him to stick with it.' Moving forward, Michael makes a novel suggestion, one that would show an immense level of understanding by the government: 'With public dollars having funded the mothballed project, the government should now consider releasing the calculator's source code and enable other groups to pick up where the OCA (Office of Consumer Affairs) left off.'"

Comment Re:I'm so going to get flamed... (Score 1) 306

I think you're forgetting the part where Sun can then get back the code from the fork. And Sun still has just as much control of their own version, as they have just as many devs working on it.

I think what you really mean is this: If you are open sourcing your main product in hopes of sacrificing direct purchase revenue for free developer time, you run the risk of alienating your community and losing developer time if they decide you aren't doing a good job.

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