>The SDK is there to allow people to add whatever features they want. If there is something they can't add with what the SDK provides, then either it requires changes breaking component compatibility (which only I could do even if the source was open), or person trying to implement the feature is doing something seriously wrong (happens very often).
"Implementing that feature would break component compatibility" is not a valid reason not to release the source. If someone wants to modify the software to implement a feature they want even if it would break compatibility, that's their business.
>As for porting to different OSes, sourcecode release won't magically spawn people capable of doing that properly. Somehow no one has written fully functional foobar2000 clone yet.
The point of having it open source is that the possibility is there. Right now it's impossible. Someone has to go through the trouble of documenting all the features and then reimplementing them.
>Sourcecode loss argument is not really valid, I keep backups on multiple redundant devices. I'd be surprised if someone who spent as much time on programming as I have wouldn't know well enough how to handle this.
Two words: bus factor.
I see attempts to refute reasons to open source the code, but no reasons not to do it. If the reason is simply "I don't want to", that's perfectly fine, and it's all that needs to be said.
I think people like this strive for control. Their projects are like their little kingdoms where they have the last say. You might say that they can still retain such total control even in an open source project (OSS doesn't necessarily imply "democracy"), but there's still a possibility of a vim/neovim-like split. Bram was also quite opinionated, which led some developers to fork vim. Bram was very clearly quite unhappy about the split in the community, and keeping sources closed will prevent such a scenario.
I’m not so sure about that. As a GNU/Linux user, I don’t think Windows-land has anyone who can cause as much community division as Lennart Poettering did (does?).
> Somehow no one has written fully functional foobar2000 clone yet.
Deadbeef [0] may not be "fully functional" because it doesn't support foobar2000 plugins or some such silliness but it is close enough to play the music library I played under Windows with foobar2000.
"Implementing that feature would break component compatibility" is not a valid reason not to release the source. If someone wants to modify the software to implement a feature they want even if it would break compatibility, that's their business.
>As for porting to different OSes, sourcecode release won't magically spawn people capable of doing that properly. Somehow no one has written fully functional foobar2000 clone yet.
The point of having it open source is that the possibility is there. Right now it's impossible. Someone has to go through the trouble of documenting all the features and then reimplementing them.
>Sourcecode loss argument is not really valid, I keep backups on multiple redundant devices. I'd be surprised if someone who spent as much time on programming as I have wouldn't know well enough how to handle this.
Two words: bus factor.
I see attempts to refute reasons to open source the code, but no reasons not to do it. If the reason is simply "I don't want to", that's perfectly fine, and it's all that needs to be said.