“The nature of the open source community is changing. I’m not exactly sure what “open source community” means anymore. When I first got involved with open source in 1998/99, the community was distinct: It was Eric Raymond, Bruce Perens, Robin Miller, and others like them. Developers. Gear heads. Hackers. Today, it’s unclear whether that community still exists in any separate, discernible form.” Read more here.
Does ‘community’ still exist in open source?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Indeed, I think there are less devs than before comparing quantity of users/devs… even though the great momentum today FOSS is getting. I always finding stupid claimings from stupid people whinning about how pro-OSS they are but they even can’t understand how a simple autogen routine works. You know..
A pitty.
Regards,
Jay
PS: I’m with the articles’ author.
Just because you like/use OSS doesn’t mean you have to have an intimate knowledge of software design. I use Ubuntu, but I would never think of myself as being well versed in linux.
ofcourse the community still exists -_-
.. but I think it still exits, but is being diluted by money driven corporate interests who attempt to exploit it.
It is not one community, it is many.
I usually resist, but I gotta say it today: Don’t drink and spell.
the community is NOT only composed of volunteer devs. it is but natural that commercial companies come to be part of the community. after all, commercial presence is one sign that the community is doing something good.
so don’t feel bad that IBM and the likes are mingling with open source…think of it as validation of the idea of open source!
He says the OSS world was distinct in 1998, but it certainly wasn’t. He’s naming people from the Open Source camp, and forgetting the big argument over “Open Source” and “Free Software.” He’s forgetting the splits between political people with Gnome and practical people with KDE (although the split wasn’t so simple).
Time heals all wounds by making you forget the worst. Perhaps he’s forgot the worst from 1998 and this is why he’s lost perspective today.
He’s right that many have gotten jobs writing opened code; but the only difference here is that more companies are releasing their code to community. This could potentially cause problems, but I think it’s a very good thing and it’s what Free Software always aimed for: Business to see its benefits. In fact, I believe almost half of Eric Raymond’s Cathedral and the Bazaar is about business benefits for OSS. It’s mixed around in there with an essay that’s just about fully about it (the book, not the essay).
Anyway, it is more mainstream, but that’s just a fad. It’ll pass.
American tech firms identify and hire away the best FOSS brains, then after a while, those smart people find out that prison guards don’t want to RTFM, and that security means making sure the jail cell doors don’t open due to a software glitch. American automotive firms have been doing this for decades. Keep the best brains away from Japanese firms, then layoff the worst ones when the Japanese firms start hiring.
It has just become more segmented because it has become a lot bigger. I don’t read much from kernel developers nowadays because I’m not too interested in kernel development (I actually am not even sure what version I’m running right now). But I read stuff from and talk with GNOME developers frequently. And the Ubuntu community absolutely rocks.
I see a lot of community in many IRC channels about open-source projects. I idle in a LUG channel on freenode as well as several others. It’s silly to think there is no community.
I would agree that those people I chat with aren’t “big players”, but they’re supporters regardless.
From what I’ve seen there really isn’t one large OSS community but rather several pockets of OSS developers, each ranging in size, and each with a specific few projects or interests in common. There are large communities and there is recognition amongst many OSS software developers, but its not all one big community, at least not from my perspective.
I agree with Celerate. As the projects get bigger, it’s natural that the “community” feeling fades out a bit, it becomes more corporative. But then it’s a question of choice, the person might decide to go on and make part of this new type of community, or find smaller projects where you can still know people by their names.
If you check communities like Boo and DotNetNuke (just to name 2 I follow) you’ll see they still have this sense of community you’re missing.
It exists because we think alike.
We think access to source code is a good thing. There are minor details to argue over, but the overall concept is works well for everyone, except businesses, but they aren’t people.
I guess there are divides in all communities, but it doesn’t mean we don’t still have a community. Some just participate more than others.
We are divided between people who think corporations deserve the same liberties as people. People who think all software should be OSS, people who don’t. People who want to use it to make a profit. People who want to participate and write code. People who care, people who don’t, people who just want money, people who just want it to work, people who want it to be easy, people who want it to be smart, people who want it to be free and people who want freedom enforced on everyone.
We’re a bunch of crazy people spending our time playing with computers. But we’re still a community.
One way to test if there is truly an open source community is to formulate and intelligently pose a complex question regarding an open source application. A question that cannot be answered in under 5 minutes with any of the myriad standard open source replies i.e. “RTFM” or “./configure && make && make install”. A question that will actually require genuine thought to answer.
Now post this question to any Linux forum, message board, or IRC channel and see if you can get a reply that doesn’t in some way involve the ego of the replier and actually answers your question intelligently.
If this happens, then there is an open source community.
In most cases though, this will not happen.
You might be a Democrat and your neighbor might be a Republican, but does that mean you’re not part of the same community because you differ on some political/religious perspectives?
We have stregnth in numbers. The masses are the ruling party in every society. Society can’t work without us. So if we choose to reshape this monopolistic economic landscape to suit our needs instead of the needs of the corporations we can and will make it happen. Corporations are stuck in a capitalist system. Their hands are tied. They have no freedom, not even of thought. But we do.
Would it be better to maintain the monopoly or spread out the wealth and knowledge as efficiently as possible? Does trickle down economics work, or should we try to find a way to pool the resources? We have the opportunity to change the world.. how would we feel if we gave up now, sold out, or faded away? Are we trying to change the world or are we just trying to have fun or save money or what?
Look at how people keep open source sites together with collective pooling of resource and knowledge. Ever go into Linux irc channels? I just got done helping out a newbie transition from Windows 98 to Ubuntu. Man so much FOSS bashing. This is a ridiculous claim, lets get back to talking about OSX going x86.
The article doesn’t make much sense to me. First he argues that FOSS communities are declining and predicts the doom following from that, next he says Microsoft should get involved in FOSS. Why would they do that if FOSS was indeed on the decline?
community is a bunch of folk work together to achieve greater than any individual can achieve alone. The community can then share the achievements with each other with the aim of all of them gaining.
Of course there is a community in open source.
There are many different types of community…
– Open source community working across the internet or close together
– Community of democratic republicans (ie US citizens etc.)
– A company (is effectively a community)
– community of criminals (organised crime)
Furthermore, there are multiple communities in the same field, with the idea that each community competes against each other to achieve something first or to compete to provide services or products to people etc.
Competition between communities is good. The lack of competition between small communities in former communist states resulted in their falling behind, and ultimate economic stagnation. Lack of competition always leads to this.
Communities exist everywhere!
If Debian is not a thriving Free Software community, I don’t know what is.
i guess the community is dividing up. creating two distinctive communities a corporate community and a hobbyist community. top linux companies like redhat and suse that put linux in the map are breaking away form the community crating there own community made up of elite devlopers this would be called the corporate community putting hobbyist distros into the hobbyist community that no for profits business might not want to use, because they are consider a hobbyist distro only. so with this happening the integrity of linux might decline giving a bad faith impression that redhat and suse are saying don’t use the other distros and sofware they are junk that is why redhat let go of fedora.i came to this conclusion when redhat let go of fedora
In his opinion, the best companies are those that foster communities and then supplement them with add-ons, extensions, etc
Should be the other way around.The community should be an extra asset regardless if it’s contributed to a propietary OS or not (under GPL).
The nature of the open source community is changing
It should be.The guys and dolls that started can’t be around forever.So someone has to take the estafette stick and keep on going from there to innovate or initiate new voyages.
This calls to mind a related concern: What if the open source community runs out?
What if a meteor strucks the earth tomorrow,should we think all day about it?
it’s unclear to me that sales/marketing dollars spent in open source efforts, currently significantly less than in traditional software models, will be able to remain low
Why sould it remain low?I personnally would like to see more interaction between companies and universities/OSS.I see OSS as a (potential) thinktank we should embrace.
I think it’s quite normal when young people participate in OSS projects when in college or at university and decide to use their experience when they have finished their initial education.
I think first of all, can we really call it a community as such; OpenSource is a *VERY* vague term to use, to describe the different licences that code is released under – heck, some people, like RMS, refuse to refer to their licence as being ‘OpenSource’.
Then there are various degrees on how one defines ‘OpenSource’ – some don’t mind the ‘look but don’t touch’, whilst others would take a puritanical approach and say that isn’t a true ‘OpenSource’, whilst others again, will claim that the GPL is too restrictive, whilst some claim that BSD is too libre.
I think the sadest part is when someone makes a statement, and claims that he or she speaks on behalf of the ‘whole Opensource community’ when the reality is, he or she only speaks for those who agree with them.
Its like when people say ‘the gay community say xyz’, and there is a grand assumption that I should agree with it as well – just like the ‘gay community’, the ‘OpenSource’ community is as divided as any other; its merely a microcosm of the world around us.
There are moderates, extremists and purtans; all the freaks, moderates and weirdos that you’d find in any other community.
There was never a unified open source/free software community. There are an indeterminate–but certainly not small–number of development groups with different motivations and members with no concerted effort to be a collective. This was no different in 1998 than it is now, with the major difference between then and now really being a matter of celebrity. People like Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens that routinely spoke about what the “community” wanted, what the “community” did, and so forth weren’t really developers. Bruce used to actually write software at one point, and Eric certainly plays at it unsuccessfully from time to time, but nothing that they ever said to the media during the delusions of the .com era had any basis in reality and they never really reflected what was actually occurring.
The little microcosms that surround the individual projects grow and recede as the respective projects start, grow, and die. They don’t necessarily ever interact with each other. People working on Squeak don’t necessarily have anything to do with Linux, the people working on Linux don’t necessarily have anything to do with Gnumeric, and the people working on Gnumeric don’t necessarily have anything to do with the people using PuTTY. The people that use and spend their free time talking about SuSE don’t necessarily have anything to do with anything else.
OSDN makes money off of people that for some reason believe that they’re part of some cohesive social movement fighting proprietary software. Install Ubuntu on your computer, and you too are part of some kind of touchy-feely grassroots effort that will topple Microsoft! Keep refreshing your web browser to see how the fight is doing!
..just a poorly thought rant, probably written during a bad day.
One way to test if there is truly an open source community is to formulate and intelligently pose a complex question regarding an open source application. A question that cannot be answered in under 5 minutes with any of the myriad standard open source replies i.e. “RTFM” or “./configure && make && make install”. A question that will actually require genuine thought to answer.
The problem about generalizations like yours is that it’s quite easy to proof it wrong, you just need one counter-example, and certainly most people here can enlist not one but hundreds of those. I’d mention Boo and IronPython, for a start. Always got good answers, as long as I cared to put good questions.
Install Ubuntu on your computer, and you too are part of some kind of touchy-feely grassroots effort that will topple Microsoft!
Intel buying Apple and licence the OEM’s would most certainly break MS back.
I think the community has splintered into devs vs users or at least different levels of developers, those who are stand-off-ish with newbies and those who are mentoring them, this is just my opinion
the community is NOT only composed of volunteer devs.
I fully agree, for instance, look at the Slackware Linux and Libranet GNU/Linux communities. Both have a relatively small number of developers (as they are developed by one person or company), while they do greatly differ both distributions have really tight communities.
Some Slackers became really good friends, and I usually see them a couple times a year IRL.
Not to be picky but there is a definition of ‘OpenSource’:
http://www.opensource.org/
Why are Novell employees so Microsoft obsessed? The whole article was just an excuse to beg Microsoft to become an OSS platform. And their own OSS development strategy is to copy MS vaporware. In the mean time they are losing all their existing Netware customers because they are alienating them. I surely hope the downfall of Novell won’t become another reason for sceptics to dismiss OSS.
“Does the letter ‘L’ really exist in the word Linux?”
SUSE is an operating system, not his wife
That may be true, but some tech geeks and enthusiasts form a relationship with the operating systems as if they were their wives. That may include Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and even Windows.
Does ‘Eugenia’ still post flamebait?
I mean, look at the outcome (the products created) and you see what type of community we have. Sure, there are some great applications and operating systems out there in the FOSS world. But is that good enough? One word: interoperability…
For instance, the simplest of things, managing addresses. I haven’t found one piece of software that will run on all the operating systems I use (Mac, Windows and GNU/Linux) that enables me to synchronize my address book between all the applications I use (Mail, Eudora, Thunderbird, SquirrelMail, iCal and the rest). So, if I add an address (or event) in one application then all the other applications pick it up – but it just doesn’t exist, does it. But surely this type of simple application should be top of the list. So, one thing we can say is that FOSS, as with proprietary software, isn’t there to make the lives of users easier. And that, my friends, for me, is the key issue here.
FOSS developers play the non-interoperability card just as much as proprietary software developers do. Neither community have really cracked the interoperability issue. And I’m not sure it figures in their top 10 list of priorities either. It’s like we’re racing ahead before we can walk. And in the end users suffer. Gee, do we suffer. But that’s not really the developer’s concern is it…
The reasons for all this are obvious and I’m not blaming anybody for this state of affairs. Proprietary software developers need to tie users into their platform for continued revenue and so can only really play lip service to the interoperability card – they can never fully implement. But FOSS developers could…
The FOSS world is more complex because each developer has a different take on why and how they are sharing source code. Interoperability between operating systems and applications can be anathema to some developers who evangelically want this or that operating system or application to cease to exist. Net result: the end user suffers.
Indeed, it seems sometimes that the division between some FOSS developers is greater than their respective divisions to proprietary software developers (GPL vs BSD evangelists, for instance). And there in lies a key too: the FOSS world is not a community or a philosophy – though it may have been once – it’s simply something that some people do with their code some of the time. The FOSS world is too fractured to be called a community. Sorry – take a look at it.
Developers do what developers want to do. And that’s cool. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that end users end up with an easier life. And that’s the shame of all this. FOSS is “simply something that some people do with their code”. It is absolutely not about creating better computing environments for users. Take a good look at the various licences and see if you can find any wording that supports “better computing environments for users”. Not anywhere – because that’s not the goal. It’s individual users/developers that have placed that expectation on FOSS “saving the world” as many do with the Internet. But FOSS and Internet are just tools for doing stuff. It’s not even clear what the goal of FOSS is. And why should FOSS have a goal? Does a tool have goals? No, a tool is just a tool. People, my friends, people have goals.
Different types of communities should be identified, defined by people – not the tools that they use. The idea of interoperability and better user experience should really be prioritised and addressed. End users are suffering because things just don’t work smoothly between operating systems and between applications and devices.
Does ‘community’ still exist in open source? If it does then it’s the wrong type of community…
Cheers Daniel
This is basically the same thing that has happened before to Unix in particular and OSS in general. Funny he mentions Eric S Raymon, because he talks about this exact thing in his book “The Art of Unix Programming”. OSS tends to thrive really well with the small, dedicated development community, but when the corporations step in they tend to hinder the growth and development. Although I personally believe it goes beyond that. I think it also has to do with supply. Just like in the IT industry in general, the OSS community is seeing an overflow of unqualified developers and the community is saturated with people who fall into the category of “I went to college for X years because I heard that programmers were making X amount of money, now the bottom fell out of the market, I work for less than X, or Im still in college and would rather drink and part, and I work on an OSS project on the side for free. If you dont like feature Y or feature Z is broken, fix it yourself”. Not saying there aren’t the dedicated developers in the community, if there weren’t the whole thing would fall apart, but a few bad apples can spoil the whole bunch. But we have seen this sort of cycle before, and I doubt OSS will go anywhere anytime soon. Its just the corporate buble may pop again..
What we definitely need are physical local open-source communities with local meetings and parties that ensure healthy social lives for the developers. Folks, this has proven to be absolutely essential, most productive, and most fun!
Hasn’t this overused buzz word from the dotcom days died yet ? It’s a vague blend of marketing and idealism that doesn’t mean anything. That’s probably why the author is confused.
The Addressbook problem is something I can relate. I thought an option might be to run an LDAP server purely for my addressbook. I wanted it to run as my own user. But OMFG setting up OpenLDAP in this way is a B***h. Installing a complete Groupware solution on a seperate server is probably easier! I wonder why nobody invented a web solution to import ,export and access addressbooks from all sorts of applications , so you have it available where ever you are.
If anything the community has become more focused on meeting the needs of consumers not the needs of the developer. After all why develope a product that no one needs or wants? Also, I disagree with the author that corporate influence such as Novell acquiring SuSE Linux has hurt the community. Novell has been one of the strongest contenders against those attacking the Linux community (ie: Microsoft and SCO). Novell since acquiring SuSE Linux released YaST to the community to provide not only a useful tool but also promote standardization. This in turn has influenced LSB certification for Linux developers to create an organized structure for the Linux community instead of one that previously appeared as a complete mess.
Horde’s Turba seems to import/export a reasonable number of formats (most programs I’ve used can handle CSV or vCard):
http://www.horde.org/turba/
If more formats are needed, this seems to handle more, but it isnt web based:
http://www.joshie.com/projects/dawn/features.html
I’ll tell you why “nobody invented a web solution to import ,export and access address books from all sorts of applications, so you have it available where ever you are.” Because, plain and simple, developers don’t code to make the lives of end users easier. All developers have an angle. They have to survive, to earn money. Unless they are stinking rich they need to earn money. So, whether FOSS or proprietary software developers they have to lock in the user in somehow and that means restricting interoperability to some degree. Sure, there are exceptions, but again, those developers will not think about the big picture. They will not think across the board – or across multiple operating systems. And hence we should not rely on developers, left to their own devices, to make our lives easier and provide us with interoperable systems. They don’t have users interests at heart – and why should they?…
Cheers Daniel
I’ll tell you why “nobody invented a web solution to import ,export and access address books from all sorts of applications, so you have it available where ever you are.” Because, plain and simple, developers don’t code to make the lives of end users easier. All developers have an angle. They have to survive, to earn money. Unless they are stinking rich they need to earn money. So, whether FOSS or proprietary software developers they have to lock in the user in somehow and that means restricting interoperability to some degree. Sure, there are exceptions, but again, those developers will not think about the big picture. They will not think across the board – or across multiple operating systems. And hence we should not rely on developers, left to their own devices, to make our lives easier and provide us with interoperable systems. They don’t have users interests at heart – and why should they?…
Cheers Daniel
Back then it was a community of programmers (mostly). Everybody wanted just to hack. Nowdays it is a community (even better, a group of communities) of hackers, lawyers, economists and so on. Most people don’t care to code. They care about talking, going to conventions and have something interesting to say, publish “development models based on large scale economics of open source”. Sigh.
The hackers are still there, but mostly don’t talk that much (there are some nice exceptions); just code, as always.
Turba and Dawn are good tries but one only seems to run on Unix and t’other only runs on Windows. So, neither cover all the bases. So, still I say that most developers are not interested in true interoperability. Sadly.
Cheers Daniel
To put it simply, just because a program you like doesn’t run on Windows or OS X or doesn’t interoperate easily with every program you use on every platform, doesn’t mean that its developers are playing the “proprietary card.”
“Better user experience” is a fuzzy phrase. If to you it means that every program you like seamlessly exchanges data across platforms in an intelligent manner, then that’s basically an idealistic goal that isn’t going to be addressed anytime in the near future. It’s a social pragmatism problem that has no simple solution.
“But surely this type of simple application should be top of the list”
You can’t be serious. A trivial application like that you think should be at the top of their list as opposed to browsers, multimedia, office apps. Address books are simply not that important.
RE: the comments about judging the Open Source community by what a user can get from it.
I often feel that a lot of people enter the Open Source world with the impression that there is a pool of talent on the Internet whose only job is to produce the software that the users want. Claims of “elitism,” I believe, are not caused by people’s egos, so much as a simple misunderstanding of what is happening in most Open Source projects.
Open Source projects are those where people harness their collective creativity to produce some expression of their talent; something they are willing to share with others. That is about it.
It is not a for-gratis help desk that waits patiently for users to arrive with their problems. Rejecting this idea is not disdain, it is just describing reality. However, I believe that the relationship between users and developers can be much better than a corporate help desk could provide. The reason is, if someone on an Open Source project helps you, it is because they want to help, not because they are being paid to do so.
I can think of a few ways to get assistance on even the most stubborn project channels:
* Try to at least read a little of the help documentation. I know that a lot of users hate to “RTFM,” but at least look at it a little, before you ask for help. Then when you ask your questions, you can say something like, “I tried XXX, as the manpage described, but I still have trouble getting the program to do YYY.” This may seem like a waste of time, but it tells the people with the information you need that you don’t think that your time is more valuable than theirs. This is a lot like learning a little bit of the language of a country you are visiting. You might be terrible at it, but it will please the residents that you at least made the effort, and they will go the rest of the way.
* If a developer asks you to “try this,” give it a try. He is probably giving you valuable information, or is requesting information that might give him the answer to your problem. Don’t say you are too busy, or you will probably insult them. The answer might not be exactly what you want, but the developer is helping you.
* Some project chat channels have very different kinds of traffic on the “user” channel and the “devel” channel. Mine doesn’t, and we have users and developers freely conversing all day long. But some projects with high activity and traffic have separated the channels very cleanly into “how to develop the software” and “how to use the software.” Don’t just head straight into the “devel” channel just because that is where the smart guys are. They might want to keep the channel exclusively for bugfixing, patches, releases, etc, and user traffic will only be irritating noise on the channel. But if you look first at the “user” channel, you will almost certainly see a lot of the same names as on the developer side. They will be a lot more happy to help you there. This is not elitism. It’s as if you had a dry cleaning service, and all of your customers always went straight to the back room to stick their heads in the machines.
* Most of all, remember that it is a collaboration between users and developers. It often helps to give a little to get a little. Send in a patch or a bugfix if you are a coder. If you are not, maybe write a paragraph to describe the problem and how you worked around it. Add an item to the FAQ. Post a link. Provide a translation to your native language. You will almost certainly be much more welcome the next time you come back with a need.
And remember, an “elite” developer of one project is also a lowly newbie on all others. I have been working on Open Source projects for years, but I almost daily need to ask for help with some other project. A developer is just a user like everyone else! ^^
Ishmal
Does everything that gets written down anywhere have to be linked? Just remember this: community is inclusive. The end.
As I responded to the NewsForge posting:
Evolution is messy and inefficient. Creativity is messy and inefficient. Freedom is messy and inefficient. Nobody ever said the FLOSS model of progress was going to be pretty. It’s wasteful and inefficient. Most projects that start end up abandoned. There’s a very tangible Darwinian process at work here. It’s ugly, inefficient, wasteful, sometimes tragic — but very, very powerful.
The community is the ecosystem. It is expanding and diversifying before your eyes, not diluting.
Commercial adoption of Open Source is merely one albeit highly visible aspect of its evolution. Some of the less obvious ones may well end up being the most important: let’s see how we influence the future of patent law, for example.
“But surely this type of simple application should be top of the list”
You can’t be serious. A trivial application like that you think should be at the top of their list as opposed to browsers, multimedia, office apps. Address books are simply not that important.
Well, that proves my point exactly. Just because one may be a FOSS developer doesn’t mean one has the end users ‘ease of life’ stamped as a priority on one’s forehead. No, no, nope. They just don’t care about end users. I’m not saying this situation is wrong. I’m not blaming anyone for it. I’m just saying that is how it is in the most part.
And you’re right. This is a “trivial application”. And it’s because it’s so trivial that there is no glory factor in it. So, that’s another thing about all developers (FOSS and the rest), they are there for the glory. And who wouldn’t be? In order to obtain glory one needs to do glorious things. And, unfortunately, basic interoperability and usability, that the end user would love, are just not glorious enough. It’s glory that pays, get it?
All I’m trying to do is dispel the myth that developers (FOSS and the rest) are there to make people’s lives easier and build a better world. They are not.
Cheers Daniel
To put it simply, just because a program you like doesn’t run on Windows or OS X or doesn’t interoperate easily with every program you use on every platform, doesn’t mean that its developers are playing the “proprietary card.”
OK. Fair enough. But that’s the way things are tending to go. Just by the shear fact that interoperability is low on the agenda so the proprietary card must be high. Just by looking at what’s being produced can we see this.
“Better user experience” is a fuzzy phrase.
So is that! 😉
If to you it means that every program you like seamlessly exchanges data across platforms in an intelligent manner, then that’s basically an idealistic goal that isn’t going to be addressed anytime in the near future. It’s a social pragmatism problem that has no simple solution.
There is not a “simple solution” but there is a solution. And it is do-able. And you basically confirm what I am trying to say here in all this. There is no “idealistic goal” in the FOSS world. Developers don’t collectively have aligned idealism. They may individually but there isn’t any sense of coherency when seen as a group (or community). And that’s the issue. FOSS will not lead to better computing per se. People have to have idealistic goals to lead to better computing. Else we are all scrabbling around in the dirt. I know which world I prefer to occupy, my friend.
Cheers Daniel
from personal experience I have seen quite a few “virtual communities” on IRC, newgroups, what have you. As far as actual physical people I have met a whopping 3 people who use and form of GNU/Linux or UNIX variant in the last 4 years. This is simply because of the fact that i live in a smallish town and there aren’t too many computer fiends to speak of around here.
> OK. Fair enough. But that’s the way things are tending to
> go. Just by the shear fact that interoperability is low on
> the agenda so the proprietary card must be high. Just by
> looking at what’s being produced can we see this.
Something that is open and whose use is legally unencumbered is not proprietary. Not chasing the ridiculous complexity of interoperating with all of your favorite programs in meaningful ways does not make something proprietary. Openly constructing your own format in the absence of standardization is not proprietary.
> There is not a “simple solution” but there is a solution.
> And it is do-able. And you basically confirm what I am
> trying to say here in all this. There is no “idealistic
> goal” in the FOSS world.
There is no real solution to the problem. There is never going to be a time where there is global standardization of data exchange for every conceivable problem. Without standardization of intelligent data exchange interoperability is curtailed.
> People have to have idealistic goals to lead to better
> computing. Else we are all scrabbling around in the dirt.
> I know which world I prefer to occupy, my friend.
Apparently an imaginary one. Enjoy.
To Mr or Ms “Anonymous”,
You’ve made some good points and you’ve made some bad points. I’d like to continue this conversation but I will not unless you decloak. Remain anonymous and I am not interested. Back up your words by risking your reputation in public (as I do) and I will continue to discuss in public. Your website will suffice.
Why do I ask this? Well, if you remain anonymous you can say anything you want whether you mean it or not. For example, you could be just arguing for the sake of it – you could be contrary for the sake of it. So, I look forward to you backing up your words with your identity. Can you handle it?!?! 😉
Cheers Daniel
I have no idea who “Daniel Harris” is and I don’t care. You can rely on your passive-aggressive ad hominem to make up for your lack of an argument if you want. I don’t care if you’re “interested.” My only purpose thus far is to correct your mistaken assertions.
Not to be picky but there is a definition of ‘OpenSource’:
http://www.opensource.org/
But then again, thats the same problem; a small group of people defining what is and what isn’t classed as ‘OpenSource’ – it depends on what *YOU* and *YOUR* people wish to get out of OpenSource; if it is merely the ability to look and learn, then *ANY* licence would be suitable – on the other hand, however, if you want to look, learn, and incorporate the code or fork a version off, then only certain licences will be useful for you.
RE: ishmal (IP: —.sw.biz.rr.com) – Posted on 2005-06-10 21:55:57
I understand where you’re getting at with the ‘OpenSource Community’ and technical support; most people who work on these projects have no qualms about helping users; the problem starts, however, when people don’t read, and don’t even attempt to find a solution – since the solution doesn’t simply pop out at them, they abuse the maintainer of the code.
If as a end user, you attempted to find a solution, and reference to the pathes you took, the maintainer will say, “hey, get gave it ago, he followed mine and others advice, but the problem doesn’t seem to be fixed, maybe there is something outside the scope of existing howto’s”.
I recommend you all read http://www.softpanorama.org/index.shtml
Not just that page, but the entire site. I’ve been doing that lately, and I’ve had many realizations come to me, one after another.
Two articles you should read, if you don’t want to have a look at the rest:
A Second Look at the Cathedral and the Bazaar
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_12/bezroukov/index.html
Open Source Software as a Special Case of Academic Research
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_10/bezroukov/index.html
My understanding of the issue is that there never was any community. There were free software teams (free as in any way that applies) and authors. There was Thompson and Ritchie, there was the AI lab, there was people that worked with early BSDs, there was Donald Knuth. There were people that worked for the FSF.
Then there was the Minix community, wanting to make Minix into a full UNIX. Linus inherited the community, and got a good start with his promising “hacker OS.” What follows next is a strong opinion, but I invite you to read more about the subject matter than I have read and only then make your own opinions.
In 1998 Linus moved to America. Practically IBM, Intel and other big players kidnapped linux. What was dreamed, a hacker OS destined for desktop, turned into a cheap, rising all-around server OS. It got lots of capabilities that IBM wanted and could use, simply because “he, who pays the piper, calls the tune.”
At that time Eric Raymond found it profitable to generate lots of hot air and empty hype, and invent an idealistic fiction of a “community” with equally idealistic means of developing the most idealistic software of all. Softpanorama is a perfect antidote to much of ESR’s propaganda, and much more balanced at that.
IBM is the master, Linus is the cook (a servant), IBM’s, Redhat’s and Novell’s customers are guests eating at the table, and the “community” has its long-awaited free lunch picking the fallen crumbs.
The “community” was the stage-managed bunch of freeloaders and fanboys surfing the hype wave of the .com boom and collapse. Before the rise, and after the fall of the “community” there was, is and always will be both businesses and separate “free software teams” (again free as in any particular way that suits the particular project). And finally there are users.
But the elusive dream of a hacker OS and easy to use desktop UNIX still lives.