> It’s really difficult to have your engineering quality or culture NOT reflected in your open source projects.
Would it be completely unthinkable that a company runs an open source showcase team like Oracle runs their America's Cup boat, as an independent entity paid to project the brands name into the world? That would be far from the idea of business open source, but it might not be the worst way of funding the kind of free software that is not directly connected to a specific business case. Many of us don't exactly remember the name Transmeta for their CPUs, for example.
Would it be completely unthinkable that a company runs an open source showcase team like Oracle runs their America's Cup boat, as an independent entity paid to project the brands name into the world? That would be far from the idea of business open source, but it might not be the worst way of funding the kind of free software that is not directly connected to a specific business case. Many of us don't exactly remember the name Transmeta for their CPUs, for example.