Open Source advocacy the right way

What is wrong with Root Mean Squared? It’s necessary for any Sine Wave calculations regarding electronics.

… It’s very telling that the group needs advocacy. Let the software speak for itself–It already has in the case of Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.Org.

MANY people are beginning to see that there are opensource applications that actually solve their problems or meet their existing needs.

Got an old windows app, but a new network–run Wine or ReactOS (many “apps” are tied to machinery or equipment and cannot be upgraded without significant costs [think Hardware platform emulators like 68000 [costs $10,000 US.])

Instead of funding advocacy—have those people, who are apparently good at “dealing with others” and at setting up PCs with linux-based systems, communicate help, fixes, suggestions, etc. to EXISTING USERS–_WHO THEMSELVES WILL ADVOCATE THE SOFTWARE—FOR FREE.

Make the user experience good, the users will brag about your software–make it bad and you will be ignored, regardless of campaining.

Making blanket statements on your personal internet website does not help anyone but your ego. Go and actually DO SOMETHING. If you talk to someone, find out their problems and give valid solutions, not RTFM.

Regular people seem pretty happy to find that Firefox works just like IE, except without the spyware. Problem had and solution provided.

It boggles my mind how people can make a living performing “advocacy” as a job. Who pays for this and where can I sign up?

Just the term ‘open source advocacy’ sounds kind of fishy to me. That tells me that people who are into this sort of thing care more about the license than they do anything else.

Please keep your wacky logic under zour hat.

This little posting board has gone a tad bit out of control with respect to:

2) FSF/Stallsman

Maybe so.., but also the article icon/logo thing, though very small in itself, does have a lot to do with defining what the subject, and open source in general is or isn’t, just the way that you write about it yourself too.

One reason why people so easily start to write about RMS on this thread and on other OS News article comment threads about open source may well be that even the article icons seem to indicate that the article is about GNU/FSF/RMS even when it isn’t. And actually I cannot see any other reason why people write so much about RMS here when the article itself is about open source in general.

Well, but enough about that icon subject from me…

And no, the GNU tools wouldn’t exist were it not for RMS.

And that matters why…? It’s not like they wouldn’t have gotten written anyway. All of this stuff was just duplication of existing Unix tools anyway.

as people really seem to believe they can present themselves as pragmatic and aloof if they coin people they don’t understand or don’t agree with zealots (always wondering who the real zealots are here anyway),

No, no. We understand the FSF/Stallman crowd all too well. I guess english isn’t your native language, but were you just trying to say that Stallman isn’t a zealot? Hehe.

.Net could be a total piece of garbage, but if it is advertised well, it will sell, and this is especially true in software.

Linux should reconsider how it advertises, and give more priority to it. The FSF is not good at advertising to big business!

Re: Open source advocacy?

Shagrat

While certain companies like Adobe put out some really good product, they also charge through the nose for it, meanwhile, lots of other companies are selling mediocre software. So why not have companies collaborate, work on the software they need and have it run the way the need it to, and potentially save ALOT of money in the process?

See, that’s the problem. The minute you release a product under an open source license where people are allowed to distribute it for free, the resale value of that product immediately becomes $0. This is a huge problem for the open source development model.

You’re assuming the OSS apps are no good, but yourself use Firefox, do you not?

Firefox is one of only a handful of decent desktop apps that the OSS community has ever produced.

“From the article:

And those were precisely my points, nevertheless we have closed source people in too big a hurry to label open source users and developers as “zealot”, “religious”, pick your favorite insult…

I feel the same way about closed source people. Personally, I don’t give a damn what the license is. Just give me the best app and I’ll use it. The problem with advocating a certain license is that you’re no longer promoting software, you’re promoting a license. That’s like coming up with a new ratings system for movies and then advocating NOT watching any movie that doesn’t use that ratings system. Nevermind whether the movies are actually good or not.

If people believe the development and licensing model needs to be advocated on its own merits, what’s wrong with that? Proprietary software developers certainly seem keen to advocate proprietary licenses.

Sorry, I thought this was geared towards end users and not developers. When it comes to end users, I don’t really see the point in advocating ANY type of license. But if you wanna try talking developers into giving their apps away, that’s a different matter.

See, that’s the problem. The minute you release a product under an open source license where people are allowed to distribute it for free, the resale value of that product immediately becomes $0. This is a huge problem for the open source development model.

Depends what business you’re in. We leverage the linux stack for our proprietary apps. All our stuff is on specialized hardware, so we need to supply the OS too, and we don’t have to pay Microsoft or anybody else a dime. We also sponsored some work on the LLC portion of the linux network stack, and also paid out to have some people consult on embedded linux for us.

If we want open source to be used more, in business and in public sector, in homes etc., getting more high caliber support is relevant (read: corporate backing).

Open source, of course, already has many important supporters in the corporate world, and also lots of open source software has already proven to be of very good quality. I see that the major problem now is the enourmous amount of FUD surrounding open source nowadays. Anti-open source people claim that open source infringes patents and this or that IP, that it is more unsecure, a big confusing mixture or low quality projects only, not a viable choice for business, that the open source movement is governed by anti-business zealots and/or non-reliable individual hackers only etc.etc.

If those FUD claims can be proven to be false by showing people real world examples, i.e. corporations, governments and universities etc. succesfully using more and more open source, open source has a fine future. That is why the anti-open source people are doing all they can to prevent that from happening, even with very unethical practices like we all know. Some advertising campaigns alone won’t make the FUD go away. It can only be a long and hard road to win real trust. The open source movement needs to try to make more friends and less enemies with everyone, including the big corporations.

This, of course, besides of the software itself needing to be good. But I don’t see that as a major problem for open source.

The problem with advocating a certain license is that you’re no longer promoting software, you’re promoting a license. That’s like coming up with a new ratings system for movies and then advocating NOT watching any movie that doesn’t use that ratings system. Nevermind whether the movies are actually good or not.

You’re exactly right about license advocacy. Here’s a couple good quotes from the article that I’ve linked to a couple times now.

RMS isn’t fighting for software developers– he’s fighting for the software itself, and at least from his perspective, for the users who would get complete rights to use and modify any software that exists. Of course, since you can’t force companies or people to write software under those terms, it seems inevitable that the FSF policy would actually limit user choice by eliminating commercial software, and by eliminating competition.

Yet, many people seemed surprised to see such an extreme viewpoint from the FSF, while others continually down-play the FSF “extremism” by citing instead more moderate views elegantly presented by the Open Source equivalent of the SuperFriends… Eric S. Raymond (ESR), Bruce Perens (of Debian and now HP), Tim O’Reilly, and of course, the Open Source poster-boy himself, Linus Torvalds. When these guys find a soapbox, there’s rarely any confusion– They’re fighting for a world where developers are free to create the software they feel passionately about, and a world in which users are free to choose the best software on its merits alone, regardless of whether it was created by a $200 billion corporate monolith or a 15-year-old with less than $200 to his name. They’re ultimately fighting for developer freedom, and indirectly, for end-user freedom by giving users the widest possible choice of what software they want to use. They’re not forcing anyone to use any software, and not forcing anyone to release any software against their will. But they’re certainly not fighting for the freedom of software itself either.

You are not going to “convert” the masses to OSS because the concept of intellectual freedom is “cool”.

I mean, look, don’t even get me started on Copyright and how sweeping reforms are needed to both modernize it and bring it back to serving both public and private interest.

On an intellectual level, I’m all for OSS and I do make a point of sending “pizza money” to various projects from time to time.

On a practical level, I. NEED. TO. GET. STUFF. DONE. And all the intellectual respect for the movtives behind a bit of software will not make me use it, if it takes more than 5 minutes of futzing to get the damn thing to work.

I don’t use OSX as my primary home OS because I like its OSS underpinnings. I use it because it’s damn near bulletproof, easy to secure, easy to use, and has a huge software selection.

I keep plugging away at Ubunutu because it doesn’t leave me shrieking in homicidal rage every 5 minutes. (I get the decidedly odd impression that “Team Ubunutu” actually uses their distro, as opposed to the feeling that I’ve gotten from other distros I’ve tried.)

When I “pimp” Firefox or Opera to co-workers, OSS enters the conversation as an aside at the end. My co-workers do not need an *OSS* solution to the popup and spyware probems, they need *A* solution that works. “These programs are better than IE because … stick with the one you like better. Firefox is 100% free because it’s created by volunteers, and it will cost you about $30-40 to get that banner ad out of the Opera toolbar.”

Don’t evangelize the OSS part of it. 99% of the population isn’t going to use a product because they like the philosophical underpinnings, nor will they deal with the hassle of the command line because of philosophy.

Find the good. Find the programs that JUST WORK. Wait for the right moment of despair and frustration, and then make your pitch.

And for godsake, if your target says, that no, they really need feature X found in Adobe Photoshop, no amount of advocacy or good intentions makes up for the fact that the Gimp just doesn’t have it. (The fact that I love the idea behind Gimp doesn’t change the fact that the interface is beyond shitty. I have the Gimp and still choose to purchase Pshop, so that’s saying something.)

If you pimp a half-baked POS as the solution to the problem, based soely on its OSS nature, you’re doing nobody a favor, and you’re certainly not making a good case for the coolness of OSS.

Well, of course you go with option B, because option A is only *slightly* better.

But the whole thing is really a moot point because, sad to say, the difference between OSS and proprietary is often orders of magnitude.

Take for instance, software installs.

Windows and OSX — make with the clicky, agree to a EULA (if applicable) and the program defaults to installing in the programs/applications folder, but it asks you if that’s where you really want to put it before parking the program there.

Ubuntu 4.10 — sometimes you type dkpg-i, and sometimes you type apt-get, and, depending on the file type, you may/may not type in some extra cthuluspeak, and you’re NEVER, EVER, asked where you’d like the program to live, which leads to your having to hunt through the directory structure and find it, and all for no obvious, discernable at a glance, reason.

I’ve installed 4 things and never the same install twice. (It’s so completely mystifying and arbitrary what I will type at the CLI to get the software on, that I feel as if the people putting the sofware on the web are throwing darts at a board and making choices that way.)

Like I said, ORDERS. OF. MAGNITUDE.

I didn’t say advocating software was useless. I said advocating a software license to end users was kind of pointless.

Ehm, you did read the article, didn’t you? It wasn’t restricted to end users.

It’s also funny that I never saw a license called ‘Open Source’. It could be possible that the author of the article was talking about the Open Source development model. Since people are not sure if the model is viable in the long run, some advocacy makes sense to me.

However, you’re right that most end users care about the functionality of software, not its license.

is that he is often very direct in his way of talking. no political selection of words. it just indicates that he is very passionate about what he belives in.

allso, inviteing him to a linux user group or similar may not be a good idea. while he and his gnu movement created the groundwork that linux is buildt on, he have not to do about the continual evolution of linux. ie, its best to only invite him into a os neutral enviroment that is about free software in general…

hmm, i wonder if he is doing much codeing these days, and what state hurd is in.

allso, i wonder how easy it would be for any of the linux distros to start useing the bsd toolchain (the bsds created their own as a reaction to the GNU/ demands from, you guessed it, rms)…

I agree with metric here. Using the wrong logo as has been done here merely introduces more confusion into a area that most GNU/Linux users (unfortunately) have pretty much no idea about.

RE: rms’s “problem”…

hmm, i wonder….what state hurd is in.

I have the debian port installed. It works, it hasn’t crashed, I can do all my normal computer work with it though admitedly there is no sound, and I cant get gnupg to work (but I believe its do-able).

No, you are confused. You don’t have to be a master of file formats to get software. There is one way for the newbie to do it; and that’s thru Synaptic, which is the gui front end to apt-get. They never touch the command line. Their software universe is the repository.

I don’t know if they’ve improved Synaptic since the last time I used it, but from what I saw, there was like 8,000 different packages listed. I found two programs with this approach:

1. Piss-poor organization. I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for something unless I knew what it was

2. They seemed to have ever damn package in existance, except for the one I happened to be looking for at the time.

Some distros have tried to solve the first problem with stuff like Click ‘n Run, but those generally tend to not even have 1/10th of the software that regular apt has.

My point was that

step 1) Make the software GOOD and USEABLE

step 2) Let the software speak for itself (small groups of happy users will become large groups.)

I don’t think your job is useless–many unknown people whose work is great, would remain otherwise unknown–this is the case with authors of books, independant films, and other types of media, etc.

Let’s take a different example:

Napster. Not advertised publicly by the software company–Yet MILLIONS of people used it. Why? it was written by some dufus in a college dormroom, yet it’s interface was so easy to learn and it was so novel at the time that EVERYONE CAUGHT ON AND ADVERTISED IT TO EVERYONE THEY KNEW_–FOR FREE>

Same can be said about the .mp3 format. It’s not an open or free standard–or even a really good one anymore, compared to contemporary standards, yet Winamp (another one written by some college kid who was busy not drinking,) managed to make it mainstream.

The advocacy, is very strange to me. If my software was good at solving problems, I’d start listing problems it’s good at solving, simple as that. So that you don’t burn people pointing out what it’s not good for is just as important.

When was the last time GNUcap ro gEDA was advertised anywhere? It’s competition, MultiSim, is horrid at calculations, yet very easy to use and more popular (not to mention $3500 us)

The more problems the software solves, the more it will “speak for itself” by end users.

I heard about firefox because I was using Netscape->Mozilla->Firefox (from 0.7 on.) I used computers quite a bit during the BBS age, before the WWW was so popular.

Qmodem was effectively my “browser” — a piece of software, pimped on me, because it was so much better than…. NOTHING.

You install software through the installer provided by your distribution. This is in the menus, it is explained in the documentation of _every_ distro, and many put it on the panel. You have absolutely zero need to know where the hell it goes, because the launcher for the program appears in the menu when you install it, and disappears when you remove it, and simply typing its name in any place from which you can run software will run it, with no need to specify the path. Turn the question on its head – *why* does Windows *make* you choose where to install software? Why should you even know where it goes? Why is having fifteen thousand directories under a directory called Program Files (none of which are even in the freaking path) simpler or better than having fifteen thousand binaries in /usr/bin?

Open source model might not suit every software development task as well (e.g. commercial 3D games), and neither might closed source (e.g. some encryption, security and infrastructure things). As long as there’s been software, there’s been both closed and open source. It will remain to be so. Both software development models have their pros and cons. It seems to me that the nasty war between the extremists of both camps does no good to anyone.

but OS X shows that it’s possible to put a very nice, intuitive to the non *nix geek, front end on it.

Yep. Though I don’t know if using Synaptic is really so much harder GUI to install/update/remove software? (anyway, besides of Linux showing its geek/nerd heritage sometimes, like in its heavy use of CLI tools, sometimes doing everything via a fancy looking GUI and not having access to commandline tools can just make things much harder too) Anyway, OS X is based on open source too (Darwin, BSD), basically only the GUI surface is proprietary. When talking about OS X, you’re talking about open source too. Besides, practically all commercial operating systems, including MS Windows, have borrowed heavily from open source software. On the other hand, there are open source and GUI-based operating system projects (Haiku, Syllable).

The wars between open source and close source extremists often increase only useless FUD.

that i had not botherd to do before in mandrake the other day. i had a rpm package laying around on my HDD and doubleclicked it. up comes a root password query. ok i input the password and is greeted by the rpmdrake interface (mandrake gui frontend to urpmi, and urpmi is kinda like apt-get). it then asked me if i wanted to install said package, i said yes and then it went on to try and install it, while trying to deal with any dependencys useing available install media and any rpm servers configured. this is no diffrent from the windows way and i wish i had tested it before, but i was to used to createing a folder, adding it to the urpmi config and then pulling a update every time i changed something in that folder.

aside from the password prompt and the dependency checking it was just like windows. now you could argue that they should remove this dependecy idea but personaly i like it, rather then haveing to update 101 apps based on a bug in a lib i can update the lib itself. and i dont get redundant files, so the install takes less room overall.

one interesting change i could like to see tho was for users to be able to install apps either into their own home folder or into a general home/apps folder or something that all normal users could access, allowing for users to install and uninstall apps that have no direct effect on the workings of the os itself. autopackage seems to be aiming for this.

and i see someone commented about gobolinux. that distro is interesting as they use a system of symbolic links to create backwards compatiblity. and i wonder if they would be interested in useing that new filesystem that showed up with the latest knoppix. its called unionfs (not related to the union stuff that there was a article here on osnews i think). it allows for the content of several folders to be stacked into one folder. with that and a nice installer script one could install a app, have some mountpoints set up and presto…

My preference for free software over proprietary software is nothing like a religious belief; it’s based on my own *opinions* as to what constitutes a good model of software development in both practical and ideological terms

You claim that it’s not religious, but in the same breath you claim that’s it’s practical and ideological. Your sentence suggests that the ideology is separate from practical. What is the ideology?

That software should be free, that people should have the right to use and modify every software. Phew, that was hard.

Victor.

That software should be free, that people should have the right to use and modify every software. Phew, that was hard.

I guess videos and music should be free too. You can modify them. People only have the rights that the developers give them, unless they code it themselves.

Try again.

Yep and some people prefer software that allows them to do with it what ever they please, so what exactly is your problem with that? What is so hard to understand about it? For me it adds value to the software, so I prefer this kind of software, that’s all.

You’re not understanding what I said to Victor. Victor said that “software should be free, that people should have the right to modify every software”.

No, you are confused. You don’t have to be a master of file formats to get software. There is one way for the newbie to do it; and that’s thru Synaptic, which is the gui front end to apt-get. They never touch the command line.

As much as it pains me to do so, I have to agree with Lumbergh here. 🙂 Newbies – and even intermediate users – will use the distro’s GUI front-end for its package manager (Synaptic, Rpmdrake, etc) when they install software. For starters, the repositories are in general very complete; then, there’s the matter of keeping KDE/Gnome/etc menus up-to-date (which often won’t work if you install from other sources). Most importantly is the use of updating packages for security reasons (or just because you want the latest version).

More advanced users may install from source, but at this point they can handle the disadvantages that come with this.

permanent? ouch!

we may as well hand over all our money to our new monarks then!

copyright for stuff like software should be in the area of maybe 20 years in my view. just look at the rate that new versions of some apps gets spit out.

copyright was tuned for hardcover books, and a distribution system that was about sailpowerd ships. these days you can beam pdf to 1000 printshops around the globe and have them get 1 million copys printed each and then distribute from that. or you can use airfreight to have the goods on the other side of the globe the same day.

basicly the timeframes for stuff like copyrights should be based on the products primary shelf-life (ie how long it will sit at the top 10 shelfs and similar, or how long until replaced by some new version. most likely no more then 1-5 years) and the system of distribution and production available.

whats being done wrong is to apply the same rules for products that on the surface looks the same but that live in slightly diffrent economic enviroments. most movies and music are 1 year tops primetime, books have maybe 2-3, software can be from under 1 to above 10 years depending on a lot of factors.

the laws are old and in dire need of a update. but they benifit the fat cats on top and will benifit them even more if they get extended rather then reduced. and as you can more or less buy a law these days, its just a matter of how much lobbying you feel like paying for, this will most likely happen.

ideology? The idea that developing software in an open manner is a good thing (as distinct from the software produced) for various reasons. I know you’ve read lots of them, as you bash RMS at every possible opportunity. I agree with a lot of what he says (not all, but a lot). You don’t, and that’s fine. However, my opinion on this has nothing to do with religion.

Folks, synaptic is *not* all that and a bag of chips.

1) I can’t make heads or tails of half the file names in it.

2) Opera 7.54 *NEVER* showed up, neither did Nvu.

3) As an uninstaller it does a half-assed job

4) Interface isn’t exactly user friendly and intuitive.

When installed, Opera and NVU didn’t automatically show up in my applications menus. I have to put them there. I also have to install and manually assign icons for them.

Finally if I wanted to go out and see all of the software I could potentially install on my ‘puter, I’d hit version tracker.

AdamW is right, making an engine is a lot of hard work, but it can be reused for many games. Meanqhile, the bulk of making a game is making models, animations, textures and game programming (what some call integration, i.e. make all assets work together using the engine). On a console game, with a team of let’s say 30 people, about 6 of them will be programmers (maybe one or two more after alpha and/or beta, in order to squash as much bugs as possible).

As far as open-source goes, I don’t see why the engine itself can’t be open-source. The actual content remains proprietary, of course (the characters rarely belong to the developer: more likely they belong to the publisher or a licensor). Of course, many game developers will use open source tools to actually make the game (such as gcc, etc.). Also, use of OpenOffice is spreading for people who don’t use office software as their primary tool (i.e. artists, programmers, testers, etc.).