There’s no question that the open source community has a lot going for it. Besides a staggering amount of developer power that can be turned against important problems, the open source movement also has a passion and commitment that the commercial software world often envies.
What’s Wrong with the Open Source Community
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Zealots.
OSS culture is probably the Unix culture at its worst.
I think it’s better summed up like this.
People who write FLOSS do it in THEIR OWN TIME so they can do whatever they like. Get used to it. Get over it. It’s not going to change.
Pretty much every point in this article can be aimed at proprietary developers. Consider:
“Too many developers ‘scratch the same itch”
Too many developing houses try to develop the same products. What really is the point of having umpteen hundred icon editors available from Tucows? What a waste of effort when if they worked together, they could come up with something good?
“Open source developers love a good feud”
A bit like all the legal hassles that SCOG are producing right now? What about all the cases where some get-ruch-quick lawyer patents something obvious and sues a large company (Eolas, anyone?)? Sounds like a good feud. And surely, all the FUD coming from commercial companies (about OSS or other companies) can be categorised as a feud?
“Open source developers often scratch the wrong itch”
Proprietary developing houses often release software that fails to find a market and the company goes under.
“In the open source community, you’re either ‘with us or against us”
A bit like vendor lock-in? Or is it like when MS used to threaten OEM’s into paying for a copy of Windows for every PC sold whether or not it had an OS.
“The open source community has a huge chip on its shoulder”
Was it Allchin or Ballmer who called linux a “cancer”, and the GPL “viral” and “unAmerican”? What about SCOG screaming about the inadequacies of OSS software auditing when they have yet to prove any Unix SysV source code exists in Linux? SCOG sounds way too religious for me.
Interestingly, in their recent response to the court, they claim that they need to examine recent AIX and Dynix code. At the ScoForum, they said they had proof in hand of the copying of millions of lines of code. Where is it?
Overall.
The article tries, but fails, essentially because it focuses on the OSS community as if it were a single organisation. It is not. It is made of people, just like countries. Imagine if I wrote an article: “the problem with Germans is…” (not that I would), and you get an idea of how patronising and insulting this article is.
Secondly, these criticisms appear to me to be perfectly valid criticisms of people in general, no matter what their religion, race, creed, nationality, or indeed what company they work for. I am NOT saying that they don’t apply to members of the OSS community, but just imagine:
“Too many people do the same thing”
“Too many people enjoy a good fight”
“People often do the wrong thing”
“With people, ‘you’re either ‘with us or against us'”
“People have huge chips on their shoulders”
If people could sort out these problems, the world would be a better place, with resources going to where they are needed, no fights or anomosity, no demanded loyalties and everyone trying to do what’s best.
Does this make more sense?
This article is old and already thouroughly debunked…
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/38073_2.htm
Everything mentioned in it can just as easily be said about proprietry software.
From the article: “There is absolutely no reason for there to be more than two or three distributions.”
Here’s a reason, maybe there are more than 3 uses for linux! I can see him saying there shouldn’t be 200 distros, but I wouldn’t be complaining if there were say, 10.
From the Article: “As an application developer, you would have to provide 5–10 different binary installs, one for each distribution.”
No you don’t. Thats the job of the distribution maker to make a package. Just provide the source.
Lots of other mistakes, but you get the point. Its not a “useless” article though, like some people like to say every 5 minutes. 😉
So you are saying OSS should not be doing any better ?
And OSS’ “higher moral ground” is only a beit ?
>This article is old and already thouroughly debunked…
yuck! you are right! we just found a bug on google’s news feeds then, because it shows this article among the new ones for today! 😮
Despite the “staggering amount of developer power” and all that “passion and commitment” it seems like all I’ve heard for five years is “this is the year!”
So what has all that effort given us? 200+ distros? Two primary GUI desktops that sport a watered down Windows look-and-feel? Apps that are “almost” as good as those on the Mac and Windows?
The whole business is a mess and in the midst of it Microsoft still manages 90%+ market share on the desktop and a still sizable chunk of the server market. So what have these OSS folks been doing? Working at their day jobs?
I’m still waiting…
Too many developers ‘scratch the same itch’
That’s like telling everyone to drive Ford cars, thinking that surely that should be good enough for everyone. Well, guess what, it’s not good enough for a lot of people. Same goes for any product, software, toothpaste, sushi, you name it.
Open source developers often scratch the wrong itch
No they don’t. They just don’t scratch your itch.
The rest of the comments made in the article can be assigned to pretty much any large group of people, they are not specific in any way to the OSS community. Just face it, any large group of people will have their morons and zealots, it doesn’t matter whether it’s about politics, farming or software.
OSS culture is probably the Unix culture at its worst.
You didn’t read the article, did you? There’s actually a lot of positive in the OSS community, IMO a lot more positive than negative, and the article reflects that. There’s more than a few barbs for commercial software as well; anyway, the article’s author is himself part of the OSS community (the tagline is “Are we our own worst enemy?”), and it’s clear he cares about it.
So in fact we’re talking someone who has quite a different viewpoint from yours, and would probably be offended by you mischaracterization of the OSS community. And yet you say “Pretty accurate.”
So it’s either one of two things: a) you didn’t read the article and just went into knee-jerk trolling mode or b) you suffer from split personality disorder. Perhaps you have a Linux box at home and have a love-hate relationship with the OS? 🙂
Seriously, I thought the article was fairly well-written and the criticism was constructive. I’m not sure there’s a lot that can be done about some of the issues, but overall it’s a community that evolves faster than the proprietary world, so I believe there are a few others we can work on.
Passion has both constructive and destructive sides. “Zealots” from all sides are filled with passion, but too often that passion translates itself into Web flamewars. And don’t go thinking that MS won’t try to take advantage of this passion back against the OSS community – we react so quickly to trolls like you, imagine with if there were paid agent provocateurs posting on various IT websites (and in fact, there may be).
So please, to everyone else, let the trolls’ jibes fall on deaf ears. Who cares about flame wars anyway, KDE 3.2 RC1 is out! Woohoo!
“Zealots” from all sides are filled with passion, but too often that passion translates itself into Web flamewars
Such as your posting ? I think the author’s point view is pretty accurate and you wrote a few paragraphs begin with attaching me. The truth is I read the article well before OSNews posted it here. Does OSS passion typically include
categorizing anybody sees thing differently as being with
“split personality” or a “paid agent” ?
When I said “OSS culture is probably the Unix culture at its worst.”, it was just a sepculation and now I see a fresh evidence right here.
So what has all that effort given us?
A great OS.
200+ distros?
Distrowatch counts 100, but in all fairness, when one talks about Linux, one usually means one of the main distros. In addition to these, of course, you have those that are derivatives, those who are specific to a certain region or language (and there cover a niche market), those that are experimental, those that are no longer maintained or active (whose mindshare is too marginal to draw in new users anyway, or even keep old ones), those that are Live CDs (Knopix, PCLinuxOS), those that are highly specialized (like Tom’s Root Boot), as well as those that are volunteer and hobby projects. You wouldn’t want to tell hobbyists what they can or can’t do, now, would you?
The Linux mainstream is composed of more or less 10 distros: RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Lindows, Xandros, Lycoris and a “wildcard” distro that changes from time to time. That’s a number that’s both manageable and healthy for competition. So this is in fact not a real issue.
Two primary GUI desktops that sport a watered down Windows look-and-feel?
Actually, KDE and GNOME are visually on par with (if not better than) the latest Windows. Personally, I like KDE’s latest incarnation much better than Windows XP. And with the latest FreeType library, fonts look as good as anything you’ll find on OS X (and better than in Windows, IMO).
Apps that are “almost” as good as those on the Mac and Windows?
As well as a lot of apps that are better than those on Mac or Windows. Why do you think Mac built Safari using KHTML? There’s some high-quality stuff in OSS, despite the naysayers saying nay.
So what have these OSS folks been doing? Working at their day jobs?
Quite a few OSS developers are paid for their work; OSS is their day job.
Don’t be so condescending. If you don’t like OSS, don’t use it. But right now you’re proof positive that, at the very least, arrogant attitudes aren’t relegated to the Free Software crowd.
“too often that passion translates itself into Web flamewars”
Such as your posting ?
My posting wasn’t a flame. Learn to tell a flame from a reasonably constructed argument. A flame would be like “you suck, get a life”, while here I merely pointed out the contradiction inherent to your post.
I think the author’s point view is pretty accurate and you wrote a few paragraphs begin with attaching me.
I didn’t attack you, I surmised that it was unlikely that you read the article, since your comment was far removed from the author’s point of view, yet you indicated that you agreed with him.
The truth is I read the article well before OSNews posted it here.
Then how do you explain agreeing with an article, then making a statement that is almost the opposite? Or perhaps you read the article but understood it wrong?
Does OSS passion typically include
categorizing anybody sees thing differently as being with
“split personality” or a “paid agent” ?
Excuse me? Did I categorize you as a “paid agent”? Nope, did not. In fact, I clearly indicated that you were in fact not an agent provocateur, but rather a common troll. I didn’t even say that I thought such paid agents were in these comments sections, just that I wouldn’t be surprised if there were such agents occasionally posting on IT web sites.
My, aren’t we sensitive. As far as the “split personality” comment goes, it was just to make a point, that if the Subject of a post is contradictory to the message contained in the post, then either the poster doesn’t really know what he’s talking about, or there’s something stranger going on… (c’mon, I’m just pulling your leg!)
When I said “OSS culture is probably the Unix culture at its worst.”, it was just a sepculation
Which ran contrary to the words you had just written, which agreed with an article that praised OSS as much as it offed constructive criticism.
and now I see a fresh evidence right here.
Sticks and stones, etc.
Despite the “staggering amount of developer power” and all that “passion and commitment” it seems like all I’ve heard for five years is “this is the year!”
In OSS terms, staggering amount usually equal to no more than a few dozen developers. Every one cares can write code, but integration is a nightmare.
Despite the claim like KDE or Gonome beats windows, they are not. They are just DEs, more like win31, running on top of someting, except KDE/Gnome are on top of linux the kernel and X the windowing system.
It’s so funny that people bitch and moan about the M$ monopoly and then turn around and insist that the OSS crowd employ the same strategy…
What’s so wrong with multiple people scratching the same itch? For instance people complain about the coexistence of Gnome and KDE (and the other more light weight DMs/WMs). I think it’s a good thing. Out of the rivalry between these comes some great standards groups like freedesktop.org. I think the standards that result from this are better than what we would have if there was only one DM. The same goes for other competing OSS projects. Sometimes the competing projects tend to gravitate towards specializing in one particular aspect. Other times one proves its self to be a better solution and the other solutions are depreciated.
Why is it so hard to believe that this competition is a GOOD THING?? The answer IMHO is because people still think they must distribute binary packages… WHAT IS SO DAMN HARD ABOUT ./configure && make && make install ?!?
Sheeze…
Simply, most programmers just like to program. They don’t have much social concern for non-geeks who would use their software. If more programmers had an alturistic and social approach and motivation to making software, then there would’ve been an easy-to-use free software desktop operating system available with applications long before Windows 95 was released. Today, 2004, this still hasn’t happened. Instead, vast amounts of effort is dumped into inefficient, bloated projects that don’t really work properly, with most of the effort going into working around a long history of design mess ups.
Why is it so hard to believe that this competition is a GOOD THING??
As it is a “dogs eat dogs” thing – the contrary to “United we stand”
Today, 2004, this still hasn’t happened. Instead, vast amounts of effort is dumped into inefficient, bloated projects that don’t really work properly, with most of the effort going into working around a long history of design mess ups.
OSS guys need to learn “process management” and try to not fall on the “same spot” twice.
So you think the author is praising OSS guys for being “spending as much time taking potshots at each other as in improving their own products.”
No, he’s praising OSS guys when he says: “There’s no question that the open source community has a lot going for it. Besides a staggering amount of developer power that can be turned against important problems, the open source movement also has a passion and commitment that the commercial software world often envies.”
There is a fundamental difference, and even a blatant contradiction, between saying that “the open source movement also has a passion and commitment that the commercial software world often envies” and saying that “OSS culture is probably the Unix culture at its worst”.
His criticism is constructive, and even if I don’t agree with everything he says, it makes good sense. It’s clear that this criticism comes from someone who cares about the OSS community, someone who values it. Someone who points out problems inherent in the proprietary model as well, more than once. In fact, he says that he’ll be first in line to throw tomatoes at Bill Gates, despite the fact that it’s not constructive.
So your comment is, in fact, contradictory to the author’s point of view, even though you personally choose to be somewhat selective about the various parts of his message. Unless you agree with throwing tomatoes at Bill Gates… (I prefer whipped cream pies, myself…)
As it is a “dogs eat dogs” thing – the contrary to “United we stand”
Well, isn’t that the nature of human business? Aren’t liberal democracies based on the idea that some degree of competition is good? Are you against competition in the private sector? Why should it be any different for OSS development?
That said, some of the “competitors” listed by the author actually do cooperate, like KDE and Gnome. It’s not a “dog eat dog” world as much as a “my lawnmower is bigger (or has more features) than yours” thing. Some of it is futile, but it does fuel innovation.
I have problems with the Open Source community, I myself tho as a member of the GNU Darwin Project dont mind the GPL and every peice of code that I have written for any Open Source project gets submitted back. Some of the problems that I have are:
FUD and Misinformation, yes the OSS Community does spread just as much FUD and misinformation than anyone I know and do sometimes tend to run right into the speeding bullet. And I have run into some that just plain lie.
Unprofessionalism, even though I support Open Source and am an Open Source developer some people in this community are very unprofessional and it makes me ask the question, ” How in the world do these people work?”. Some of these guys are very high strung and I personally would rather work with Jason Voorhees.
Zealotrous attitudes, Im starting to hate most of the OSS community as much as I hate most people in the Mac Community. If you say something bad against linux you get attacked. That is why I tend to distance myself from the OSS Communities. I dont care if anyone evangilizes Linux, it is great but dont go too far. I have heard many OSS guys sound like real idiots.
Attack first, listen later. This also happens quite a bit. Shoot the messenger and ask questions later.
Always right attitude. Many in the community act like they are gods gift to IT. They think their position is always right and that they are geniuses. Guess what guys, you arent and I hold more respect for Bill Gates and Darl McBride then I do for most of the OSS Community.
OSC (or linux) might be the biggest world collaboration activity on earth in the history.
we should go for guinness recodr
Guess what guys, you arent and I hold more respect for Bill Gates and Darl McBride then I do for most of the OSS Community.
I was okay with your post until that sentence. You respect Darl McBride more than most of the OSS community?
Well, you’re right: there’s at least one obnoxious guy in OSS. One who makes broad generalization about the nature of the community, insulting a large number of people he doesn’t know by holding them in lower esteem than a sleazy, immoral opportunist who’s trying to make billions from the hard work of hundreds of volunteers (followed the case lately? It’s no longer a copyright case, in fact it never was, yet they still want people to buy licenses at 600$ a pop…).
Seriously, I’ve always respected your posts in the past, even though I didn’t agree with them, but this one is representative of exactly the type of behavior you’re complaining about.
I swear this is the same exact article I read months ago. At least it said the same exact thing and they were wrong then too. There is nothing wrong with the open source community. This is getting old. Actually it got old before I saw this article originally a few months back. Maybe the open source community isn’t as geared towards business as propietary solutions but there is nothing wrong with that. Obviously it’s NOT about the money in open source. I know this is considered blashpemy in the US, but it’s not all about the dollars and cents. Besides all that, open source is still running strong in the business world. Despite what the author of this article wants you to believe, choice is a good thing for business.
The whole nonsense about open source having a chip on its shoulder and fueding all the time is utter nonsense. Every other fanboy of every other OS is just as bad. Just look at Macophiles, and the Wintrolls that frequent these forums. I guess the author just isn’t used to people being competitive in the software market. That so-called “chip” on open sources shoulder is just the drive to be better than existing software. What’s wrong with that?
” Guess what guys, you arent and I hold more respect for Bill Gates and Darl McBride then I do for most of the OSS Community.
I was okay with your post until that sentence. You respect Darl McBride more than most of the OSS community? ”
Did I say all of the Open Source community, no I did not. And yes i do respect Darl. He made a claim, he is sticking to it despite how ridiculous the rest of us think he is. The man has some guts. Whether his claims are right, wrong or mediocre. I dont know anymore, I have heard so much coming from both sides. But one thing I do know. Darl McBride will go down swinging and how can you NOT respect a man like that.
“Too many developers scratch the same itch.. A perfect example of the “too many itches” syndrome is the absurd number of Linux distributions that exist.”
Ya, choice is really a bad thing. I mean we should all just focus on developing 1 package, who cares if it doesn’t cater to other peoples tastes and needs.
“Open source developers love a good feud”
This goes back to the statement above.
“Open source developers often scratch the wrong itch”
That is right, the developers of open source and free software care nothing about who uses their product. Good thing we have more than just one piece of software. Oh wait I guess that we shouldn’t have so much choice. Sorry, I will shut up and stick with only one piece of software.
“In the open source community, you’re either with us or against us”
Ya, give us the source code, that is way too much to ask for from the open source/free software community.
“The open source community has a huge chip on its shoulder”
That is right, we got tired of using windows. You know what attitude I am sick of with the windows community? Lets exploit rather than fix the bugs of this operating system. And when we start to fix them we will take our time or submit a half-assed patch that doesn’t work. So later we have to patch the patch that was meant to patch the patch.
But one thing I do know. Darl McBride will go down swinging and how can you NOT respect a man like that.
Because he’s a no good crook trying to profit off of other people’s work. Even if there were some some code from SCO’s Unix in Linux, which I don’t believe there is, but even if there was, there is still a lot of other people’s work in there that SCO is trying to sell people for 699 a seat without compensating the authors. That’s stealing and that makes him a crook, not someone I would respect.
SCO is one of the founding partner of UnitedLinux, along with SuSe, TurboLinux, Connectiva.
The last thing *nix heads could do is to united together.
SCO is trying to sell people for 699 a seat without compensating the authors. That’s stealing and that makes him a crook, not someone I would respect.
So OSS guys still have eyes on money ? How about HP claims $ 2.5 Billions of linux revenue ?
There is nothing wrong.
If we define wrongs as things in the plan that leads in the wrong direction related to the goal.
The onyl goal of the OSS community is to write open source code. The plan is to write source code, much of it, that aint closed. To accelerate the process licenses such as GPL is often applied.
I wuold say that we are proceeding rather well towards our goal!
The article, however, assumes that the goal of the OSS community is to manufacture applications for end users.
This might be the case for certain individuals (or companies) but certainly not for the whole community.
indeed, i think it got that way once people started trying to convert users to use gnu/linux. then things became expected of it.
Why is this article being reprinted? This is old news and has been thoroughly debunked before?
Geesh.
This “Roberto J. Dohnert” is a very funny fellow. To put some context to his love-hate relationship with open source, you need a little more info about this guy.
Just yesterday, in a different thread, he talked about how he conducted an analysis of Win2003 server performance compared to that of Linux. He proceeded to claim that he did this at his own computer lab and that he runs Apache on Win2003.
By his own account, he is still attending school. I am sure he must have seen some serious enterprise deployments at the old age of 28. This you cand find by googling him and reading his page and blog.
But it gets better. Less than a year ago, he was saying this:
“Suse is by far the easiest and most user friendly distro I have seen and since migrating my customers to Suse I have had waaaaaaaaaaaaaay less service calls.”
Where? Here: http://dot.kde.org/1041971213/1042087901/1042131937/1042240756/1042…..
Wait, it gets better. He was also a Machead. On a thread called “Greetings from a hardcore MacHead”, he states:
“I have to [sic] words for any new Linux user who doesnt know much about the OS
those words are: SuSE LINUX” The thread is here: http://dot.kde.org/1041971213/1042087901/1042131937/
So less than a year ago, Suse was the operating system he recommended to all his clients. Now, did the architectures of LInux and Windows change dramatically in the last year?
The answer is no, even if Microsoft released Windows 2003 and it is an improvement. It’d better be.
So a Machead proclaims the virtues of Linux and comes back running to Windows. What a joyous journey!
And the guy who has his own test lab and runs apache on Windows 2003 cannot host his own site, but depends on, you are going to love this one: geocities.
http://www.geocities.com/rjdohnert/
Right on, kiddo.
Scroll down and read that he writes or should I say *codes* his webpage by using frontpage, clearly every web developer’s preferred development environment. And his preemptive statement at the bottom of the page about this issue simply does not cut it. Frontpage sucks and produces ugly code.
So what else do we need to know about this loony individual? Oh, he is also a rebel:
“UPDATE:
While the California Supreme Court has ruled that DeCSS does not fall under the first amendment right, I will continue to offer this code online, until either i am served a cease and desist order or unless asked by Geocities to remove it. i do not see this happening anytime in the near future. If this does happen though, contact me and I will e-mail you the files, they are small enough to go through an e-mail server.”
I agree in principle with what he is doing there. Civil disobedience has long been a way to achieve social change, why would soemone risk huge legal fines to defend the right to play DVDs by using open source software and then recommend and advocate a proprietary operating system that is on its way to become even more so and that uses DRM to deny the kind of choice that he is now defending?
Nuts, I tell you.
So the great Roberto J. Dohnert has been shown for the shill and self-contradicting late teenager that he is. Everytime I re-read your assertions on this page, I am both nauseated and fall off the chair laughing. “I tested W2003’s file serving on my lab”.
The joys of google.
I believe there’s only one thing that’s wrong with the OpenSource Community: It became soo big that the “community” can’t handle it right now.
But I do also believe that this will be sorted out in the next few years. During this time, Linux will grow just enought to let some smart boys figure out that the next generation of Linux users want distributions to protect them to the complexity of Linux.
Thus, while RedHat, SuSe and Sun will try to conquer the enterprise, geeks will continue to use Slack, Debian, Fedora, and Gentoo. But new users will be attracted by Lycoris, Lindows and Xandros alike distris because the latter figured out, reducing the Linux complexity is the key to success, and they will grow the fastest.
I predict that those “new user distributions” will use only one of the big desktops and those projects “scratching just another itch”, will simply vanish to be geek packages – just like vim and emacs are now – or integrate into one of both development frameworks.
In the last stage, we’ll see the rise of a single user distribution growing up to monopole stage within the Linux home user community. The last stage will be the start of the real competition to Microsoft, because of a unified package management, a consistent desktop, and a standart development enviroment. Maybe Linux will gain market share in the home user segment, then.
All we have to do now is to wait patiently the next 15 years while doing whatever we like to do.
The author is pretty much correct on all the points he makes.
Maybe the only goal of *some* OSS people is to write open source code, but certainly not for all. Some OSS people, and by the volume of there voice it would seem that there are many, want OSS to be the *only* model for software development on the planet.
They are not interested in producing OSS code so much as they are interested in competiting with and hopefullly destroying proprietary solutions. This is why if you go to someplace like slashdot, the bastion of the OSS nut (not referring to all OSS people here) the greatest concern is Linux on the desktop and the death of Microsoft. What’s more is that many of these nutso people are partial only to Linux for some reason. Even projects such as the BSDs are met with much scorn.
We even see many of these people on osnews. How many times have we seen posts in reference to OSS hobby OSs along the lines of ‘Why bother? <programmer> should put effort into Linux’?
This attitude tarnishes the OSS community and turns *many* people away. If OSS was about producing the best code and most interesting projects, I’d love to be considered a member of the OSS community. As it stands, regardless o f the fact that I’ve released open source software myself, I *really* don’t want to be considered a part of the OSS community.
And people, please remember that I am *not* talking about ALL OSS people, only a certain group of rabid zealots that manage to be so vocal on the web. I understand there are many great and talented OSS people, just as there are great and talented proprietary people.
My point would be that the OSS Community is not an organized entity, its just a lable for people and companies utilizing collaborative development.
Too much pride results in unkillable projects, and project forks which are as doomed as the projects they branched from.
Open source will reach the masses on the desktop as soon as we get rid of choice. Choice has kept linux (as an os) a bit fuzzy.
Once I can describe what a computer running a linux os “looks like”, “feels like” and “acts like”, I can say that it’s coherent and succesful. Today it’s more like “well, it depends” or “you can have it pretty much any way you like”.
We need one desktop environment. It may be worse than both gnome and kde, as long as it’s coherent. Yes, a coherent look is more important than speed, stability. Period.
As for organization, the oss community needs to form hierarchical structures found in the proprietary software world. Dictatorship is the most succesful model for software development organization. Ask Torvalds or Jobs. The linux kernel, and the apple computer platform are wildly successful. And we know why. They are not results of parallel efforts of different ideologies.
Too many developers scratch the wrong itch.
This is the one part I don’t agree on. The wonderful thing about Linux is that it is an OS by and for programmers. I don’t think that it is too fruitful to spend so much time trying to make things dummied down for average users. We have an OS that does that already. But I think that if the Open Source community continues to focus on making an operating system programmers would love, it will eventually mature into something average home users would want to use too. The reasons are simple of course, security & stability.
As for the other issues brought up in the article, the author is dead on. The fact that these problems exist in proprietary software also is completely irrelevant. The individuals that make up the comunnity certainly have a shared set of goals that is often subverted by petty squabbles and infantile behavior. But there is also no doubt that these mistakes are being learned from and corrected. The problems outlined in the article are nothing more than the signs of youth.
This article is old and already thouroughly debunked…
http://www.linuxworld.com/story/38073_2.htm
—————–
Although I respect the counter points. It is almost impossible to “debunk” an opinion.
I happen to think the author of the original article was dead on accurate. What’s wrong with competition? At a certain point, it would make more sense for linux developers to concentrate their efforts, instead of making 350 different distributions, and a dozen different GUIs. Not only does this diffuse efforts, but it hopelessly confusses the marketplace, and is a nightmare for developers.
>>Everything mentioned in it can just as easily be said about proprietry software.<<
Last time I checked, there were not 350 versions of Windows; nor where there a dozen different GUIs. Besides, even if the same problems did exist in proprietary; that doesn’t mean that there are not problems with OSS.
200+ distros?
Distrowatch counts 100
————————————–
Doesn’t look that way to me. According to what I found at Distrowatch:
“Despite its appearance, DistroWatch is hardly an exhaustive list of Linux distributions.”
“Currently, there are a total of 240 Linux distributions in the database. Of these distributions, 28 have been officially discontinued”
http://distrowatch.com/stats.php
Seems to me that adds up to well over 212 distros.
A huge problem with UNIX has always been that the OS has been pulled in different directions by the different vendors.
Last time I checked, there were not 350 versions of Windows; nor where there a dozen different GUIs.
It doesn’t help to exaggerate the situation. As I’ve already written, when considering the Linux mainstream there is about 10 distributions, and 2 Desktop Environments. Those who use other WMs or distros do it by choice, but they’re rarely newbies. Their mindshare is very low, so one can’t say that they’re confusing the marketplace. Also, their development teams are very small, so it does not take away from other projects that much.
This is pretty much an irrelevant issue. In fact, I’ve never heard someone who was considering Linux saying that there was too much choice. There were other concerns (mainly application availability), but never was the so-called “too much choice” argument part of the equation.
They always complain that the community is doing such and such wrong, and that this and that need doing for linux to become big in (the enterprise|the desktop|mainstream computing|grandma’s house). They never seem to get that “the community” is not one thing. The only thing that the open-source community has in common with itself is that likes open-source software.
That’s it.
Anything else that you assume is either in the community’s interest, or is a goal of the community, is wrong, when you take “the community” as a whole. The community is in fact hundreds, or thousands, of communities with their own goals (and sometimes misconceptions) that sometimes have things in common and sometimes don’t.
*Parts* of the community have chips on their shoulders. *Parts* of the community scratch the same itch. *Parts* of the community get in feuds.
There’s a lot of assumptions in these kinds of articles that really can’t apply to our “community” because our community never really fits into the box they’re trying to generalize us into.
Yes I agree with what you are saying. A lot of good comes out of OSS. I have not read the article because I think that the community is doing a darn good job.
Ok now I read it. I don’t really agree with it.
Firstly, I don’t see why software needs to be distributed in anything but .tar.gz. Sometimes an RPM will not install (talking as a newbie to Linux), a case in point was Mysqlmanager to install on Debian. If one has the .tar files, there is no problem. What is wrong with the simplicity here. Boring shell commands (when you have made them 100 times and more, but if is working……..)
Secondly, I take my hat off to SuSE V8.2 is a version that any non-computer person can install as easily or easier than windows, and have a super system within a couple of hours. Also just like with the latest version of windows, if you do not buy your hardware with care, it ain’t going to work with the OS. Just look at the mess of the much touted USB. Plug and pray………
Thirdly, what on earth is wrong with having 100 distros? I have one excellent distro just to play games. Morphix – 501 games on a Knoppix-based live cd! Yes loads of games and they do not need to touch the existing hard disk! Knoppix as a recovery distrubtion. Suse as my main distribution. I think that is just fine.
Fourthly, when you are up against a company with over 90% of the desktop market, you know the air stinks everywhere. Such a high percentage is unhealthy. Also unhealthy for the giant.
Rock on OSS, I really hope and pray that in 2004 the desktop percentage for OSS goes up and up.
>What’s wrong with competition? At a certain point, it would >make more sense for linux developers to concentrate their >efforts, instead of making 350 different distributions, and >a dozen different GUIs. Not only does this diffuse efforts, >but it hopelessly confusses the marketplace, and is a >nightmare for developers.
There is no marketplace without competition. But to take the idea to its logical concludion, if concentrating efforts is the ideal, why work on anything other than the dominant operating system? This (in my opinion rather bizarre) objection to open source software seems to be a preference of monopolies. Without a mononpoly, there is “wasted effort” in duplication. (Not that I believe there has ever been, a monopoly in software in the last thirty years)
>>Everything mentioned in it can just as easily be said about proprietry software.<<
>Last time I checked, there were not 350 versions of Windows; >nor where there a dozen different GUIs.
The article does not claim that there are 350 distributions, it claims that there is no need for there to be more than three. Althogh some would like to believe that Windows is the only proprietry operating system. It can easily be verified that there are more than three propriety operation systems. Thus, the same percieved problem can easily be said for proprietry software.
Answer is, as usuala, if you don’t like it, write it
yourself or pay someone to do it for you.
This is how it is now, and this is how it is going to be
in the future.
DG
You realize that every one of your “points” is completely debunkable? I’m 19 and I deployed a Windows 2003 server last year. Is that suprising? Not really, if your a geek and you love what you do you find ways to work with the technology AT A YOUNG AGE. I can agree with alot of what he said about Win2k3…its a great peice of software. By far the best OS Microsoft has released and atleast comparable with any OTB open-source software of a comparable price.
Secondly, you can easily love your Mac and like SuSE too. Alot of enterprise places will not allow Mac in the enviroment because they’ll have to support a second operating system. Since many places already run Unix, Linux isn’t a hard sell. SuSE is a good choice.
True, Frontpage isn’t the best development enviroment for HTML but if you want to throw something together quickly and easily, its perfectly valid and the codes getting better in it with each version. It will NEVER touch what you can make on your own in notepad (Or UltraEdit) but its almost at Dreamweavers level.
Finally, since when is 28 a teenager? Most teenagers (14-19) would flip you the bird for including someone of that age in the group. Thats not a teen, thats an old person to them.
YOUR post makes one fall over laughing, its lunacy in of itself, typical of the Slashdot crowd.
” By his own account, he is still attending school. I am sure he must have seen some serious enterprise deployments at the old age of 28. This you cand find by googling him and reading his page and blog. ”
Yes I am attending school, I am getting my masters in Computer Science. I have a Associates in Information Technology and a BA in Computer Science. I also work for a living, I work for a private technology consulting firm as the CIO and IT Director as well as the lead consultant and yes I have seen some serious enterprise deployments.
“Suse is by far the easiest and most user friendly distro I have seen and since migrating my customers to Suse I have had waaaaaaaaaaaaaay less service calls.”
Yes I said that, but this has nothing to do with Linux or Open Source software but rather the community. Read the title of the story.
” So less than a year ago, Suse was the operating system he recommended to all his clients. Now, did the architectures of LInux and Windows change dramatically in the last year?
The answer is no, even if Microsoft released Windows 2003 and it is an improvement. It’d better be.
So a Machead proclaims the virtues of Linux and comes back running to Windows. What a joyous journey! ”
I recomend SuSE to my clients that wish to switch to Linux. For those that wish to switch off of Linux I recommend Windows. My company has in fact deployed Windows Server 2003 and yes, I find it does runs just as reliably as Linux. I do in fact run Windows XP Pro, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS X 10.3 at home.
” And the guy who has his own test lab and runs apache on Windows 2003 cannot host his own site, but depends on, you are going to love this one: geocities. ”
My Lab is at work, although you could call my home setup a lab with 9 computers total. I use Geocities for 2 reasons:
1. Convenience — I have neither the time nor the inclination to maintain a web server on my own. With my time restraints from school, work and meetings and trade shows. I dont have the energy to deploy a web server. The way I see it now, the way I do it is perfect. If it aint broke, don’t fix it.
2. Nostalgia — I have used Geocities since Yahoo started Geocities. Why bother to move it. I dont have to please anyone but myself.
” Scroll down and read that he writes or should I say *codes* his webpage by using frontpage, clearly every web developer’s preferred development environment. And his preemptive statement at the bottom of the page about this issue simply does not cut it. Frontpage sucks and produces ugly code. ”
I dont care, I find Frontpage to be perfect for what I want to do, maintain a personal site. I am not a professional web developer I have no need for Dreamweaver or anything fancy. Who cares what I use to develop my own web page.
I do wish to thank you. You did prove my point louder than anyone else possibly could have.
Too many developing houses try to develop the same products. What really is the point of having umpteen hundred icon editors available from Tucows? What a waste of effort when if they worked together, they could come up with something good?
You forgot the 200+ distros, the 100+ text editors, the 100+ copies of every linux app. out there. If these people decided that 100+ text editors are to much. Maybe the comercial software guys have the right idea, they seem to be doing well with out having 100+ of “THE SAME THING”
I do wish to thank you. You did prove my point louder than anyone else possibly could have.
Not quite. He proved that at least some OSS advocates have bad manner. To generalize and say that, therefore, most OSS advocates have bad manners is simply a logical fallacy. Following this flawed reasoning, one could assume that all pro-Windows advocate have trouble making valid arguments based solely on the Pacbell troll’s recent posts.
This is exacerbated by the fact that advocates with bad manners are usually the one we notice most, while the silent majority of decent people that make up the OSS movement go unnoticed (being silent). So in fact, the sample you are exposed to to make such a generalization is a) too small to be of statistical value, and b) much too skewed towards one end to be representative.
So, despite being loud and obnoxious, the OP didn’t prove squat about the OSS community, being representative of his own person only. I can understand your frustration with such loud advocates, but please do not generalize.
Regarding Darl McBride, I don’t particularly find that using the media to make wild allegations about Linux (and then refraining from making those same allegations in a court of law) is particularly admirable. Being obstinate isn’t the same thing as “going on fighting”, however romantic this may sound. All signs point to nothing more than a pump’n’dump scheme and an attempt at extortion towards Linux users – and there’s nothing admirable about that.
It’s like saying that you respect a con artist as “admirably tenacious” because he vigorously denies having conned others and hangs on to his lies…
You’re free to your opinions, of course, and I respect you for that, but I do think you’re profoundly mistaken with regards to this situation.
You forgot the 200+ distros, the 100+ text editors, the 100+ copies of every linux app. out there. If these people decided that 100+ text editors are to much
Could we please stop exaggerating? It serves absolutely no purpose, except trolling. There aren’t 100+ copies of every Linux apps – this is a ridiculous statement. Even for distros: there may be over 200 Linux distros in total, but less than a dozen really matter.
Let’s try to keep the debate at a reasonable level. Exaggerating just makes you lose credibility.
Some of his points have 2 edges:
“Too many developers ‘scratch the same itch'”
IOW software diversity. The opposite is one best tool for the best job, software monoculture.
“A perfect example of the “too many itches” syndrome is the absurd number of Linux distributions that exist.”
Again, it’s the “diversity is wrong” point. I think it’s not. It makes the choice for a newcomer hard, but for those who know what they want, it does not. Tell me, was it really bad there were multiple Unices in the 80’s and 90’s? They weren’t all the same either.
The fact there’s much commercial Linux distributions available simply means there’s a market for a cheaper OS than MS Windows.
“Open source developers love a good feud”
Same point; there’s actually competence and choice. What would you prefer then? Only 1 KDE as DE and no GNOME? No Emacs, only VI? Ok…
The point is peoples’ philosophies, opinions about design and performance, preference for features, and you name a lot more here, are NOT the same. So if you want to go all-round and satisfy more people, you’ll have to give more people a diverse option. Why wouldn’t those developers of <fill in ie. DE name> NOT share their source, why would distro X NOT include this DE as option? Why not? Sjees. It’s that simple, we as humanity simply don’t agree on the choice of one and in the end this leads to diversity.
“Open source developers often scratch the wrong itch”
Answer: IMNSHO you get what you pay for. Pay someone to fix your your problem, and you’re all set. Pay not, whine not, and wait till it is fixed by yet another friendly developer. The problem lies at the user who thinks s/he’s God. S/he ain’t. Not even when you buy a commercial/propritary product. You’re not the one with the knowledge, the other side is. If asked nicely, there’s a better chance though.
“In the open source community, you’re either ‘with us or against us'”
Please leave this idiotic Bush rhetoric before you. It doesn’t apply, like it does almost never apply anywhere. There’s at least a proper analysis required to proof such imo. However, there is no ground for it stated, no analysis. Which leads it to be as simple as black vs. white thinking; a fallacy. Here’s one simple example why this idiotic BS is untrue: most kernel developers, including Linus, use the propritary program called BitKeeper (in short BK) coded by Larry McVoy. Are those kernel developers, including Linus, “against us”? Ofcourse not. There, BS theory collapsed.
When this was to be true, it would require anyone in this one camp AND anyone in the other camp to be thinking _and_ behaving exactly like this: with us, or without us. But are there even exactly 2 camps? When there aren’t the theory is flawed already. This makes it so hard and so unlikeky to be true that it is imo just better to forget it at all. Applies to the article and to Bush his theory.
Yet another horrible article about how bad the FLOSS camp is on the site (you guessed it!) OSnews.com
What’s the point of articles like this? Why is there never a “What’s the deal with Windows users?” or “What’s wrong with Mac Fanatics?”. This is just pointless.
“Even for distros: there may be over 200 Linux distros in total, but less than a dozen really matter.”
Funny thing is the point they’re “Linux” distro make them count as “Linux” (GNU/Linux). But it depends on what you want. Floppy/firewall distro’s (wether it has Linux kernel or not doesn’t even matter for the point) are not really for the desktop, are they? So a user who wants to run “Linux” on the desktop doesn’t really even want to consider these floppy/firewall distro’s. So does it matter they can _chose_ for a floppy/firewall distro? No it doesn’t. In such case these numbers don’t count as possible choice for running (GNU/)Linux on the desktop.
More variations are possible. Debian GNU/Linux as example: Debian GNU/Linux vs. new user; most likely (!) not an option. User who wants commercial support vs. Debian GNU/Linux; would be hard to get support, impossible to get official support. User who wants to buy from a company vs. Debian GNU/Linux; Debian is community-driven.
Point is they’re just not all the very same.
You’re right, I should have been more precise and said that for Desktop Linux distros, less than a dozen really matter.
Knoppix and other Live CD distros serve a very useful purpose, just like firewall distros and such. But it’s dishonest to count them as Desktop distros.
its been a real long time since i have seen this bad a zealot/comment ratio, even here on osnews. the windows trolls are out in full force (you gotta wonder why windows comes up in EVERY linux discussion) and the linux trolls are responding in kind.
first off, the article was quite uninformed or biased, im not sure which, but i could make good arguments against many of his points. regardless, thats no reason to attack the author.
osnews is a great site with alot of great articles, but anything that even hints at a good or bad point in windows, linux, or any of its desktop managers, results in a totally and completely worthless discussion afterwards.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
its been a real long time since i have seen this bad a zealot/comment ratio, even here on osnews. the windows trolls are out in full force (you gotta wonder why windows comes up in EVERY linux discussion) and the linux trolls are responding in kind.
That’s because in every Windows discussion Linux zealots come across…. and somehow getting pumped with “Linux ready for desktop” once aday is getting a bit boring. Especially as even the god-worshipped Linus says at least 5-10 years before Linux can compete… that doesn’t mean it actually will, but it might stand a chance.
Might that answer your question?
Me personally would just want to have a filter which eliminates any posts which include the word “Linux”… is that buildable Eugenia???
Agreed, and the tone of many of the comments are pretty much validating the article’s description of “loving a good fight”.
In my experience, the OSS zealots represent a very small minority of those involved in OSS. Unfortunately, most zealots aren’t actually working on OSS (or maybe not working at all!), so have plenty of time to flood Usenet and forums like this. OSS works because of the tireless programmers who have little time to comment, and are working their tails off on something they love to do. Some of the more inspiring exchanges on web forums or Usenet re: OSS go like this:
A: “Package Foo doesn’t work right. Can’t it do this?”
Programmer: “Nah, didn’t design it that way. You’re welcome to add it, though.”
A: (a month later) “I patched this up. See what you think. It does what I want now.”
Programmer: “Cool, I added this, too.”
(etc…)
Much more often, unfortunately, we get:
A: “This sucks. What a lousy program Foo is. Bar rules.”
Programmer: “You’re welcome to change anything in the source.”
(a month later)
A: “This sucks. What a lousy program Foo….”
(etc…)
So, what’s wrong with so many people scratching the same itch? It doesn’t seem to matter on the server side, but on the desktop side, with so many people scratching, for any genre of app, it seems you’ve got 300 projects on freshmeat in alpha/beta quality, and a handful of the more matures ones that could be called decent at best.
Although some projects rise above the schlock and become really good (like Firebird), such a thing is the exception rather than the rule. For example, with so many open source IM clients out there, you’d think by this point we’d have a least one that supported voice/video & ‘imviroments’ in Yahoo.
That’s because in every Windows discussion Linux zealots come across….
That’s kind of a chicken/egg situation, now, isn’t it? Who started trolling who’s thread, and such…when with this vicious circle of trolling end? Anyway, “they do it too” is hardly ever a good excuse.
and somehow getting pumped with “Linux ready for desktop” once aday is getting a bit boring.
Then just agree that Linux is ready for the desktop and then we’ll all just stop talking about it. Anyway, it’s the truth – at least for a lot of desktops, lots more than 3%.
Complete world domination if much further off! (C’mon, take a joke! 😉
Me personally would just want to have a filter which eliminates any posts which include the word “Linux”… is that buildable Eugenia???
Just don’t read the comment sections, you won’t see the word Linux at all!
After reading through some of the responses to the article, I can only come to the conclusion some of you did not get the point at all. It just seems like some people (no matter what) can’t seem to open their minds to other ways of thinking. You might be an expert on the IT field, but you are still a nobody in reality.
No wonder why NERDS are placed in a group.
you know, you are probably right with the fact that linux guys troll windows comments too. im sure you get just as annoyed with it as i do, and can appriciate my frustration. (I read alot of stuff on windows, its just most of the time i dont feel compelled to comment as my main interest is in linux)
it is a situation that just pisses me off in general, its not just windows trolls on linux threads, linux guys seem to enjoy trolling their OWN threads. the only time a thread grows more quickly then someone saying “Gnome rocks and KDE is ass” is when someone says “Linux sucks and Windows rocks”