[John Stalberg]

Shortly after OS X 10.0 were released I found out about and downloaded OmniWeb 4.?. I paid for version 4 and again later for version 5. I would gladly pay for version 6, but my biggest hope is on OmniGroup someday release the source code as free software. If OmniWeb would really take of as FOSS, it would create a new higher level of buzz around OmniGroup and it's OmniApp's.

It is, for me at least, a bit strange that OmniWeb has not gained more buzz than it has up to today. OmniWeb has the potential to be one of the bigger browsers market share wise. It is good enough to compete with any or all of the other web browsers. As of now I think the current state is far from ideal. A damn good browser used by a few and held on to by it's developer, and given away with a hard to see profit plan? The thing is, I think it would be just as much PR for OmniGroup as it is now, if it's source code were released and licensed as free. But it would probably gain a whole lot more interest, by devs and by users. It could get a lot of buzz. Yet it would always be thought of as OmniGroup stuff. The difference could be a whole lot of people would hear about it and it might end up being embraced by community development and could get a healthy roadmap? If OmniWeb has been a sales point for Mac as a platform in the past, todays market is a a bit different. We now has so many more users and Apple is gaining in on the the other. quarter by quarter, for some years now. This has created a much bigger playground. I is today you wan't to become known as a killer software provider for the Mac. And web browsers reach almost any and everyone out there. If it becomes somewhat popular.

This is of course OmniBoard's thing to make decisions about and I am very happy with OmniWeb today. It's just that something good, or even the best as in this case, sometimes has the potential to grow into something much better. If this is the case with my FOSS hypothesis, it is a bit of waste to not go for it. Of course, my view it is far from the only view on this. For natural reasons there is a lot of uncertainty involved in this. There should also be much more skeptical views upon my success scenario. A FOSS move should ideally be done with a FOSS mindset. Fear, ambivalens and a pure business goal is not ideal. Some form of community ideals behind such a project would be needed to really match the community in an optimal fashion.

Another way to speculate about it is to consider the worst case outcome scenario. A fork with a new name that doesn't begins with Omni. The risk for this to happen is heavily dependent on how OmniGroup would handle things. Another O-named company effectively lost it's control of its newly purchased company's Office suite and probably has lost a whole lot of community resources in other projects by being stupidly non compatible with the community. But the good thing, it is all a matter of choice!

Perhaps I'm just in love with this piece of software and fool myself into producing some overly optimistically dream that won't be, perhaps because even the best effort would not lead to such a good result? Love and money can make people become blind and unable to see realty for what it is? Yes, that might just be the case :) ... or not?