Stuart Cohen, CEO of the Open Source Development Labs, does a short piece on the myth of renegade hackers coding in their parent’s basements to create the Linux OS. He suggests this hasn’t been the case for many years and goes on to claim that of the top 25 core developers, more than 90% of them are fully employed with some of the largest technology companies in the world.
Myth of Linux Hobby Coders Exposed
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Did anyone who cares still not realize this in 2005?
The UIs look very amateur.
Article focuses just on the kernel. But what about all the other software for Linux? The articles does nothing to dispell the myth there. So it might be safe to say that the kernel is done by professionals, and everything else is still done by renegade hackers in their parents basement.
The UIs look very amateur.
GNOME 2.10 and KDE 3.4 both have very professional GUIs that many would claim to rival Windows XP. Also, Xfce 4.2 is certainly superior to CDE which was a professional proprietary UI. I really think you need to elaborate on your comment some.
Obviously there are people paid to work on Gnome/KDE/Gtk+/Qt fulltime, but there’s also lots of people that are volunteer, part-timers.
The whole “parents basement coders” is a big myth. Linux kernel and userland coders have grown up over the years. Many of them are professionals in their 30s with wives/husbands and kids.
I’m ashamed to have the same ip range as you.
However could we stand to live with a UI thats clearly better then XP.
http://www.tuxmachines.org/gallery/kde3-4/kde34_12?full=1
by saying show me a SS of a UI, you’re implying that you can judge UI’s simply by look and not functionality. Shame that KDE/Gnome/XFCE have a level of customization that outmatch XP anyday.
“Article focuses just on the kernel. But what about all the other software for Linux? The articles does nothing to dispell the myth there.”
ummm…what other software, besides the kernel, is in linux?
Few things:
1) That screenshot has so few UI elements it’s hard to say anything about it. Though I do have a beef with the size of the task bar.
2) Out of the box, a desktop environment or even a distro’s custom UI needs to be friendly, consistent, and easy on the eyes. It shouldn’t need excessive customization to become useable and pretty. Ubuntu is a good step in that direction, though some people have a problem with the earthy tones, it ‘just works’ and works well.
Okay, I think everyone can agree that the big business(TM) has his hands laid on the Linux(the kernel) and I thing sooner or later they will find a way to take it away from the real hackers.
But what about other operating systems, that can be called enterprise ready?
For example: FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD?
Are they “big business-tainted” (I call this:Wyrm) or are they the only playground for real hackers in the basement?
Maybe here is someone who has insight into the dev people of those OS’s and can say something about it?
When we say “amatures” and “hobbists” we don’t mean “people with no coding skills” we mean people who don’t get paid for developing that software. They may (and almost certainly always have) be paid to develop other software.
When we say “amatures” and “hobbists”
When *I* say “hobbists,” people think I’m a Tolkien fan with a speech impediment.
Out of the box, a desktop environment or even a distro’s custom UI needs to be friendly, consistent, and easy on the eyes.
and what is the first thing 50% of windows XP users do? revert the display back to the old style, instead of fisher price look. Okay 50% may or may not be high as no real study has been done. Every one I know who uses XP has done it though.
The only two OS’s that i haven’t had to customize the displays to work with them were OS X and BeOS. Windows I would spend several hours resetting colours, icons, and behavior before I could stand it. KDE would also get several hours, a major resize of the dock, and a different set of applets would need to be installed and configured.
top 25 core developers, more than 90% of them are fully employed with some of the largest technology companies in the world, because they have a college degree from some 150 thousand dollar school. Now that sounds more correct. what about self taught programmers the ones that did not have a teacher to tell them if they were coding correctly,etc. or had 150 thousand dollars for a four year college to go to like stanford or USC. Do they also get hire from top tech companies?
I just wasted an inordinate amount of time combating trolls on another thread regarding the same issue.
*sighs*
http://www.deviantart.com/view/14781487/
http://www.deviantart.com/view/14282547/
There you go, ManDriver. Wake me up when Windows gets a consistent UI, and gets rid of the hideousness Luna is.
You forgot: employed at companies where the executives make ten times or more as much as they do. I think it says a lot that these 90% of developers work for someone else (especially since it is the “someone else” that is making the most money out of the arrangement).
Any evidence to support your claims?
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Okay, I think everyone can agree that the big business(TM) has his hands laid on the Linux(the kernel) and I thing sooner or later they will find a way to take it away from the real hackers.
But what about other operating systems, that can be called enterprise ready?
For example: FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD?
Are they “big business-tainted” (I call this:Wyrm) or are they the only playground for real hackers in the basement?
Maybe here is someone who has insight into the dev people of those OS’s and can say something about it?
”
OK, now explain to me what IBM and co. are going to do…send out agents to hold all the core kernel hackers at gun-point until they assign their copyrights to the big companies? LOL
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So what is the benefit of “open source” for the business world? Very little I am afraid. While low-end businesses may benefit from the low initial costs of setting up “open source” solutions, such systems have poor scalability, innumerable support problems and leave customers at the mercy of the frenzied hordes of developers who seem to think this “bazaar” approach (bizarre more like it!) to software development is superior, despite a complete lack of proof that this is so.
”
Or, you know, you could buy Red Hat or download Debian Stable/CentOS and not have to worry about the Bazaar model, since all you are receiving is bug and security updates. Which is what a lot of businesses are doing.
Oh, and I doubt the 300 out of the top 500 supercomputers running Linux (I think the exact number was 305) are being used by low-end businesses. When my parents started their company, they didn’t buy a 3000 processor cluster.
Oh, and when you download something for free, where the hell do you expect support to come from, out of your ass? That is what companies like Red Hat and Novell are for.
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Indeed, the fact that so much “open source” software has been tainted by the anti-capitalist GPL means that it is worthless to the business world as a raw resource. It may well be possible to challenge this in court given the resources – despite rabid zealotry, few “open source” proponents are willing to put their wallets where their mouths are and fund those organisations that represent “open source.” So far the only reason that no company has challenged the GPL is because of the inevitable negative publicity it would generate, and possible reprisal DDoS attacks from angry “hackers.”
”
mmhmm, and what exactly would attacking the GPL do for a company? First of all, a company HAS TO BE SUED FOR VIOLATING THE GPL BEFORE PROVING IT INVALID. A company like Fortinet isn’t going to embark on a quest to invalidate the GPL unless they are sued first.
Oh, and then never mind the fact it would be legal suicide to invalidate the GPL. Consider this, if you are redistributing GPL’d code, but the GPL is invalid and therefore doesn’t exist, what license do you have from the copyright holder to redistribute that code? NONE. Therefore, all the copyright holder has to do is show his code in your product, and you have just lost a copyright infringement lawsuit. Just because a license is invalidated doesn’t mean everything covered under it becomes public domain…and anyone who thinks that is just plain retarded.
Now about few open source proponents funding organizations that represent Open Source, could you please explain to me what the bloody hell that had to do with ANYTHING else you said? I’m assuming what you are getting at is that we should pay some organization so that they can validate the GPL? If so, what are they going to do, just sue some random company with a claim that the GPL is valid? We can’t exactly retaliate without being attacked first.
Oh, and btw, Novell, Red Hat, IBM, HP, Sun Microsystems et al find the GPL friendly enough. As for 99% of all companies (estimate) using GPL software that AREN’t software companies, I honestly don’t think they give a flying f*** if the GPL is “viral” or not, considering they don’t redistribute software, therefore, as far as they’re concerned, it is Public Domain.
If you believe this, it is YOU who are the ‘troll’. I see nothing trollish about pointing out that the open source emperor has no clothes. IBM are not actually spending $1bn on Linux. They are spending considerably less than that. This is what is known in Business terms as ‘hedging your bets’. In the very unlikely event that Linux actually becomes a popular choice for the desktop, IBM wants some of that action. But it is hard to see how Linux can succeed on the desktop, since Microsoft OWN it, due to their questionable, but undeniably legal business practices.
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If you believe this, it is YOU who are the ‘troll’. I see nothing trollish about pointing out that the open source emperor has no clothes. IBM are not actually spending $1bn on Linux. They are spending considerably less than that. This is what is known in Business terms as ‘hedging your bets’. In the very unlikely event that Linux actually becomes a popular choice for the desktop, IBM wants some of that action. But it is hard to see how Linux can succeed on the desktop, since Microsoft OWN it, due to their questionable, but undeniably legal business practices.
”
His exact words were that Big Business was going to take Linux away from the hackers, which is not possible. I never mentioned the Linux desktop once. I actually didn’t say a thing about what you are talking about. Are you sure you are replying to the right topic? Maybe you should re-read what I said.
Are we in court? Is this a debate, all of a sudden? I was under the impression that this was a discussion — a conversation of sorts. It is most impolite to accuse someone of trolling without the evidence to back up your claim. The onus is on you to support your allegations. People are innocent until proven guilty, since you are trying to turn this discussion into a trial. So far you have provided some fairly dubious evidence, which looks more like speculation than proof. Pretty weak, compared the the demands you were making of the original poster.
Indeed, the fact that so much “open source” software has been tainted by the anti-capitalist GPL means that it is worthless to the business world as a raw resource.
Explain to me exactly why I should give a flying **** if businesses can’t use my code, my labor as a “raw resource” with no strings attached.
“Explain to me exactly why I should give a flying **** if businesses can’t use my code, my labor as a “raw resource” with no strings attached.”
Because one day you will have to move out of your parent’s basement and get a real job. You need to know the skills that are relevant to today’s Fortune 500 companies. Adapt or die.
“Oh, and when you download something for free, where the hell do you expect support to come from”
Why can not support be free?
Support must be free: it is the only way to guarantee that developer releases quality product (more quality- less support) and that developer does not sneak cost of software development into the price of support contract.
Because one day you will have to move out of your parent’s basement and get a real job. You need to know the skills that are relevant to today’s Fortune 500 companies. Adapt or die.
Nice try.
I ask again, why the **** should I, as a developer, care if my work is unsuitable for businesses to leech off of?
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Because one day you will have to move out of your parent’s basement and get a real job. You need to know the skills that are relevant to today’s Fortune 500 companies. Adapt or die.
”
Ah right, he must learn what Fortune 500 companies wants, even if he doesn’t work for them. Hey everyone, release all your code under the BSD License quick, or those big bad Fortune 500 companies will come a knocking. Better yet….Public Domain!!!
In case you can’t tell, he is talking about code he writes in his free time, and yes, I am in-fact being sarcastic.
”
Why can not support be free?
Support must be free: it is the only way to guarantee that developer releases quality product (more quality- less support) and that developer does not sneak cost of software development into the price of support contract.
”
I suppose if I write a GPL’d product I should automatically set up a call centre and give away free support? That would be like expecting Debian to provide the same services Novell does, except free of charge.
“I ask again, why the **** should I, as a developer, care if my work is unsuitable for businesses to leech off of?”
Because you leech of businesses.
Because you leech of businesses.
Really, how so?
”
If you don’t then your product is irrelevant. You might as well just keep it to yourself and not release it under the GPL because it will be useless to everyone else.
”
Well I guess Microsoft should pull their OEM versions of Windows then, right? They don’t support them, they leave that up to the OEMs.
Oh, and I would hardly call Gnome, KDE, Mozilla and OpenOffice.org irrevelant, but none of them have call centers. And if you would bother checking the licenses, none have warranties either.
Lol, what are the open source people to do. They have one side that hates them because they “kill jobs” and “lower programmer’s salaries”. They have another that feels that not only should they give out free software, but they should support it too.
Although I guess if a one man project gets wide enterprise acceptance, the developer could of course just not sleep anymore and focus on support calls in his new spare time :-P.
“You steal their intelectual property and use it in you GPL software, you have to give something in return. You take from the community, you give to the community. To do otherwise would be antisocial and against the GPL ethos.”
I don’t recall him saying he was stealing intellectual property and releasing it under the GPL. I suppose you are psychic now?
You steal their intelectual property and use it in you GPL software, you have to give something in return. You take from the community, you give to the community. To do otherwise would be antisocial and against the GPL ethos.
I’ not entirely sure what planet you’re on. You seem to be trying to swing the argument that, because you presume my code infringes on copyrights or patents held by businesses, I should just bend over and allow them to ignore the terms of the license I choose for my code if it happens to be better for their bottom line.
I could have swore I’ve read this before, about last year or so.
Its the default KDE 3.4 start. Of course it has few elements, it it has too much clutter it’ll be unusable, look at the standard XP, its just a thin blue bar with the time and a start button. OSX has a few more items on its bar, KDE seemed to have found a center point. The taskbar is a preferance, its easily changable. Anywayrs, most people enjoy a taskbar that size(especially on 1280×960). The fact that you have your standard icons, browser,mail, menu, help, easy and clear to use is a plus to most people. 5% of the height of your desktop is more then acceptable of a size.
KDE’s is easily very pretty on defualt, and it doesn’t require any changes to be usable, and its more then consistant.
I use ubuntu myself, the earth style somewhat bugs me. GNOME’s new default Clearlook is excellent though.
“I’ not entirely sure what planet you’re on. You seem to be trying to swing the argument that, because you presume my code infringes on copyrights or patents held by businesses, I should just bend over and allow them to ignore the terms of the license I choose for my code if it happens to be better for their bottom line.”
You seem to have been reading too much Ayn Rand novels. Helping out your common man is not “bending over”. You are not the only person in this world. We live in a world community where everyone has rights, wants and dreams. You may not like it, but we have to share and help each other out if we’re ever going to survive as a species in this universe.
“Although I guess if a one man project gets wide enterprise acceptance, the developer could of course just not sleep anymore and focus on support calls in his new spare time :-P.”
I don’t know if you’ve been living under a rock, but out in the real world there are thing called companies. Many people are hired and work toghether inside these companies. So a single person does not have to do all the work.
Dude, I know I don’t know you, but surely you can do better than selective reading comprehension.
“Dude, I know I don’t know you, but surely you can do better than selective reading comprehension.”
What he said.
>”I suppose if I write a GPL’d product I should automatically set up a call centre and give away free support?”
That would be nice and I fail to see anything wrong with that.
You write GPL code as a volunteer, distribute it free of charge, companies like the job you do, they hire you- and you keep writing GPL code.
You provide support as a volunteer, do it free of charge, companies like the job you do, they hire you- and you keep supporting users free of charge.
Same principle applies, why not?
>”That would be like expecting Debian to provide the same services Novell does, except free of charge.”
GPL is would be like expecting Debian to provide the same type of software Microsoft does, except free of charge.
Wait, they do!
*******
The Internet domain name you came from, shawcable.net, resolves to a country where citizens and residents entitled to free of charge health care services.
Just 100 years ago the whole concept of free of charge healthcare was as revolutionary as GPL 20 years ago.
If you can’t grasp why free of charge support not only possible but necessary to compliment GPLed software- open your wallet and take a look at your Health Card.
This is free of charge support- and it works.
No one uses Linux (shock). Most people use GNU/Linux. This is important because it highlights that Linux is just one project in the OS. I for one am not surprised to see Linux mostly done by professionals (often being paid for the work); there’s a lot invested in it being “big and professional like gnu.”
My $.02 US.
Thanks for the compliment, I think they look amateur too:
Amateur:
1784, “one who has a taste for (something),” from Fr. amateur “lover of,” from O.Fr., from L. amatorem (nom. amator) “lover,” from amatus, pp. of amare “to love.” Meaning “dabbler” (as opposed to professional) is from 1786.
(Taken From http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=amateur )
Is it possible to end anonymous comments? Meaning: Block anonymizer.com .
You clowns managed to fill nearly a whole page, but couldn’t be bothered to type in a name other than Anonymous?
“Just 100 years ago the whole concept of free of charge healthcare was as revolutionary as GPL 20 years ago.
If you can’t grasp why free of charge support not only possible but necessary to compliment GPLed software- open your wallet and take a look at your Health Card.”
The points you miss are:
1) There already is free support for GNU/Linux. There are innumerable free forums where you can get support. Many specific applications have there own forums where you can get support form the developers themselves. In many cases if you email a developer he will respond quickly and helpfully. If you want formal business support for a business then your are going to have to pay for it and rightfully so.
2) Here in Canada and Europe we don’t get free health care, we collectively pay for it through taxation. It is then available to everyone at no cost at the point of delivery – and yes it works very well.
1)BSD has true kernel space threads, Linux has a hacked implementation of pthreads wich actually uses fork().
2)BSD has true SMP support. Linux has a kludged user-space fine grain locking mechanism which doesn’t give crap for performance.
3)*BSD has full security implemented while GNU/Linux allows little endian machines to overwrite suplemental registers with any buffer overflow code, thus giving root to any user.
Hell, stop yapping about such details – Linux still has the coooler mascot!
Writing a program and releasing it under the GPL as free software (note: free as in freedom, Russian Guy…learn the difference once and for all!) is an undertaking requires a reasonable amount of work, but not so much that the developer can either a) be paid to do it by a company because it will be useful to it, or b) do it on their spare time as a personal project. In either case, this will not prevent the programmer from earning a living.
Giving free support, on the other hand, will quickly become unfeasible if the software becomes popular. The more users, the more people that will require support. The developer could quickly be forced to do nothing else than support, therefore not be able to make a living.
Once again, Russian Guy, you try to confuse matters by introducing arguments that appear to be logical, but are based on faulty premises and incorrect use of words – in this case “free as in freedom” software and “free as in beer” support. Your attempt to undermine the alternate business model proposed by free software advocates is therefore based on a false analogy that intentionally uses the confusion around the meaning of the word “free”. In other words, there is no moral or logical inconsistency in offering “free” GPL software but not “free” support. None whatsoever.
As a core *BSD developer I feel the need to post here.
Uh, no, you are not. Prove to us that you are (start by stopping to use the anonymizer service) and then maybe we’ll talk.
He already proved he’s not by his adversarial attitude. Developers aren’t nearly so “we rock you suck.” They know better than anyone the flaws in their own system.
Besides, BSD’s all develop seperately. NetBSD only recently got an efficient threads implementation
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The fact that he has to try and dispell a myth just proves that its true on some level
Well, I guess, I could find as many pro-linux arguments, as you could find pro-bsd arguments. I’m not going to do that, because it’s of no use anyway… Just shouting some stuff and claiming you are God, doesn’t really convince me…
I love how OpenSource advocates confuse people by claiming they promote “free as in freedom” software only to point its $0 costs and how much money it saves to anyone.
GPL software is available free of charge- as a result of it being free as in freedom.
I run hundreds of Linux servers- is it because they make me free? Is it because at my spare time I tell my family to get lost while I am reviewing sources?
No, my Canadian friend: I use Linux because it saves money to my company. So do others.
I save money because I can freely copy software.
Giving free support is completely feasible. Start with that: stop writing crappy software. Document it. Don’t tell people to shut up or RTFM just because they can get your crapware for free. Be responsible for it.
Right now developer is rewarded for writing free of charge crap- more support money comes to him. That must stop. I am not Stallman, I don’t know how- but why not through Software Tax he proposed, by allocating portion of that tax to support?
People should stand up, thank GPL developers for all their freedoms and money saved, and ask GPL developers do the next logical step: free users from support costs. Support must be free, as in freedom and as in beer.
I can go to developer and ask for a copy of GPLed code delivered to me free of charge with no strings attached, I should be able to get support from the same developer delivered to me free of charge with no strings attached.
May be then software in our computers will need as much support as software in our DVD players and microwaves.
Since when?
I mean, FreeBSD up to 5.x had threads which was far worse that linux ones, admitted by BSD community. Now in 5.x FreeBSD catched up, but NPTL is true kernel-side threads, and everyone use it for a year or two. So linux is still no worse, was better.
SMP?? FreeBSD <= 4.x had NO real SMP support. 5.x does, while it’s still beta (== betta than nothing). And it can’t get out that stage. While in linux SMP is rock solid statring from 2.2 and very good from 2.4 (or maybe even earlier)?
Same (but worse:) for OpenBSD.
Can’t say anothing on your security claim tho.
Support must be free, as in freedom
That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. Support is a service. Software is a product. Tell me, how would reproduce and redistribute support? How can someone “modify” support
Again, you’re making up this false analogy in order to undermine the alternate business model proposed by free software advocates. To further avoid the confusion you’re basing your false analogy on, I’ll use “gratis” for “free as in beer” and “libre” for “free as in freedom.”
Now, there is some amount of gratis support available for libre software: it’s called Internet forums and newsgroups. Also, many developers have a mailing list where some support can sometimes be available (such as for the Firestarter and K3b projects). What is not feasible, however, is guaranteed gratis on-demand support for every user that has a question. Even commercial, paid-for software often doesn’t have gratis support, why should libre software provide it?
What happens with libre software from commercial vendors is that I can freely download it and, if I have the knowledge in-house, I don’t need to pay for support. If I don’t then either a) I pay the vendor for it or b) I hire someone who has the knowledge (or put an employee in charge of learning about the software from available information on the Internet).
When trying to confuse the issues using dubious analogies, like you do, you shouldn’t pretend to be an advocate of all things free (as you wrote) when everybody on this thread already knows that you’re not a free software advocate in the first place. It’s a dead giveaway as to your real intentions, i.e. a desperate attempt to undermine the alternate business model proposed by the FOSS community. No one’s buying it.
” The fact that he has to try and dispell a myth just proves that its true on some level
”
Oh, is that how it works? So quotes like this one from Gates are also true “640K ought to be enough for anybody”? Don’t be a moron pc user.
It’s not support by humans that should be free (as in beer) – even if it often *is* free, you can’t demand so. Improvements in the support area should instead make human support unnecessary in many cases:
1. Improve the software itself so less people have problems with it and less documentation is needed
2. Improve documentation – often TFM doesn’t make things clearer or is leaky or hopelessly outdated
3. Set up good bug trackers and support databases – there would still be a lot of idiots who don’t use them, but then the developers could answer support requests with a simple link into the support database or documentation (saves a lot of time).
Exactly, you summed up the whole issue quite nicely.
I am curious as to where this “free support” that you are demanding is going to come from. Why is it in a free software developer’s interest to provide the level of free (as in beer) support that you are asking for? I understand why it’s in *your* interest–after all, you are getting something for nothing–but why is it in the developer’s interest? What does the developer get from this transaction, apart from your (far from eternal) gratitude?
Part of the rationale for making software code available, it seems to me, is to give users who have the skills to do so the means to modify the code to suit their requirements. Such users shouldn’t need much support. It’s not the developer’s obligation to hold the user’s hand in this process, nor is it necessarily in the developer’s interest to do so. Too much time spent on uncompensated support is time that could be better spent improving the program.
Having said this, I do agree with those comments that say it is part of the developer’s responsibility to provide good user documentation. In the FOSS programs I develop, I don’t release a new version until I have written up-to-date documentation for it. I worked as a technical writer before I began writing software, so I understand the need and value of good documents. I also try to provide a reasonable amount of user support, responding to e-mails as time allows.
The small user base of my programs makes this feasible. If I ever did create a program with a large user base, it might not prove feasible to provide this level of attention. And if I ever moved into creating some kind of commercial/shareware program, payment would certainly be a requirement for support–even if it’s just a modest $20 registration fee.
The article claims that the majority of coders working on the linux OS are now highly paid developers, and it supports this claim by saying 90% of the top 25 are just that. To me that doesnt actually suggest that the majority are high paid developers – just that it so happens to be that out of the top 25 known developers, 90% are. What about the countless others who work away on the OS out of enjoyment? Theres more than 25 developers, certainly – are they all highly paid too? I think not.
To me, the article seems to try and make an attempt to persuade non-linux users that the OS is ‘officialy’ developed by ‘trained people’. After all, to use an example, if you were buying a car would you go for one built by BMW or one built by some teenagers in a basement?