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bughunter writes: "Researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill have successfully demonstrated Tele-immersion, the next step in virtual reality which allows the live transmission of 3-dimensional representation of real scenes. Don't look for tele-immersed streaming porn just yet; it seems the sheer volume of bandwidth the demonstration consumed caused a minor panic among the Internet 2 gateway admins at UNC."

Greg Perkins has written in with a nice paper on Open Source and Capitalism. A lot of people say that these ideas are oil and water, but click the link below and read what Greg has to say about it. Update Greg sent in response to the many comments. It's appended to the end of his original piece. The following was written by Slashdot reader Greg Perkins Open Source and Capitalism

Greg Perkins

Many people associate the idea of Open Source software with collectivism (socialism, communitarianism, or communism). This is understandable given the language and ideas of some of the movement's founders and prominent participants, and given the average political tendencies of college students (at least here in the US), who seem to form the core of the Open Source movement. That is of course no cause for concern. What troubles me is that I keep noticing an undercurrent of mistrust and even open hostility toward capitalism among Open Source fans. There is really no good reason for this, and I worry that it may grow into something truly dangerous to the movement.

I have seen it asked: how can capitalists enjoy and even embrace the Open Source ideal? Hidden in this question is the notion that capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with Open Source, and that collectivism is not. While this is sure to be a touchy subject, I would like to try sharing the principled perspective of the Other Side.

In contrast to the above, I think that it is capitalism which is harmonious with Open Source, and that collectivism is incompatible; principled and thoughtful Open Source advocates should want to fully embrace capitalism for exactly the same reasons they love the idea of Open Source.

The (Societal) Elements of Open Source

I know that most people here have studied the meaning and mechanism of Open Source pretty carefully (consider the popularity of Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar, for example). Let's focus briefly on the crucial societal elements which Open Source depends on for its success:

First, Open Source depends on the idea that cooperation is the preferred mode for dealing with one another, that cooperation and voluntary association to mutual benefit is the most effective, most productive, and, well, simply the Right Way for people to live in society, as contrasted against the use of fraud or physical force. Individual Open Source authors have the right to choose what code they will write and with whom they might like to work -- nobody is allowed to make them do it. When someone else makes that choice for you it is called slavery, and Open Source couldn't be as successful as it is on those terms; peoples' active, willing participation is required.

Second, Open Source depends on the idea of the individual human right to private property. Code wouldn't exist except by the effort of the people who build it -- it is by their choice and their sweat that their code even exists, and so they naturally have the right to decide how they will deploy their creation (otherwise, why should they bother to create it in the first place?). Linus himself expressed this spirit perfectly when he said, "he who writes the code gets to choose the license, and nobody else gets to complain." Open Source authors generously choose to apply licenses like the GPL to their code, thereby exercising their right to dictate how their effort may be used (and how it may not be used).

And finally, Open Source requires the protection of private property rights by a government. People need more than to merely feel justified in saying how they wish their code to be used (and not used) -- they must have confidence that their wishes will not be violated and the product of their best efforts taken and used at just anybody's whim. People can be secure in their cooperation with one another toward whatever ends each may choose when their right to private property is protected. Doing so essentially means barring the initiation of physical force and fraud from peoples' legitimate dealings, leaving them with nothing but cooperation and trade to mutual benefit. We can see this confidence manifest as authors willingly write Open Source code, or help someone write Open Source code: they do so because they trust that the license will be enforced, that someone else cannot take advantage of them and direct their efforts to ends they do not wish.

Another Look at Capitalism

Here's the point that might surprise some Open Source advocates: the above three crucial factors are precisely the same foundation that is required for true, unadulterated, laissez-faire capitalism.

Capitalism is a social system which respects and defends peoples' individual human rights, including the right to property. Further, capitalism is epitomized by cooperation, not by competition -- competition arises in the context of several participants trying to out-cooperate each other in a division-of-labor economy. As a tiny example, consider the handful of pencil companies competing in "cutthroat, dog-eat-dog" manner with each other for the chance to cooperate with you. Now think about how many other economic partners each of them works with in trying to bring you that pencil, from the people mining the graphite and harvesting the wood and rubber, to the transport systems which take them to the factories full of people, the manufacturing and chemical engineers who design the processes, the marketing and distribution channels, and the retailer who makes it easy for you to have that pencil with little or no effort. Thousands and thousands of people all peacefully work in concert to bring you a pencil (not to mention all those who cooperate with them, and those who cooperate with them, and so on). Multiply that by all the other economic values in your life that aren't as insignificant as a humble pencil, and you can see that fundamentally, capitalism means cooperation.

Full-blown capitalism is actually the separation of market and state. In particular, it is not the current American- or European-style mixed economy, with some people and businesses having the ability to use government to secure special advantage over others by lobbying for taxes, regulations, etc. To the extent that people and companies can use government to indirectly compel others in economic matters, capitalism and everything that makes it great is undercut. In the same way that we react to proposals to control the press or the church, in a true capitalist system everybody would simply laugh at someone trying to use the heavy hand of government to some economic advantage. We would just point to the constitutional clause banning any such interference, telling them, "Tough beans -- why don't you try to persuade the people in the marketplace that you are worth doing business with?"

Common Grounds

So if you cheer for the idea of Open Source, then please cheer for what makes Open Source work. If you do that, then you are also cheering for exactly what makes capitalism work, and everything that makes it such a powerful force for improving the human lot in the world.

As a libertarian and staunch capitalist, I get a true charge out of seeing an innovative entrepreneur or inventor serving himself by serving his fellow man in some new, clever, or powerful way. As a software engineer and rabid Open Source advocate, I get a true charge out of seeing the genius behind Stallman's GPL and the meteoric rise of Open Source and GNU/Linux. What makes these great to me is the same in both cases: people are able to be productive and peacefully reap the rewards of their hard work as they see fit.

Banning fraud and the initiation of force in our dealings with one another, and respecting people and their choices as individuals by protecting their property rights... These form a kind of systemic encouragement which brings out the very best within us -- and that is precisely what drives the raging success of both Open Source and capitalism.

Recommended Reading

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt is a classic, widely regarded as a wonderful (perhaps the best) first introduction to economics.

Capitalism: a Treatise on Economics by Dr. George Reisman is a lucid and encyclopedic account of capitalism and all things economic.

Also see the works of scholars from the Austrian school of economics, like Ludwig Von Mises and Friedrich A. Von Hayek (1974 Nobel in economics), or scholars from the Chicago school of economics, such as Milton Friedman (1976 Nobel in economics) or James Buchanan (1986 Nobel in economics).

A Followup from Greg Perkins

250 comments in a day -- what a wonderful firestorm of discussion!

Now, surely the more harsh commentators understand that in a short piece like my editorial, no author could even try to cover every anticipated objection or outright mistake in reading and reasoning that a minority of the audience might bring. That would simply bore or distract the majority of readers, perhaps to the point of missing the original thesis! I needed to leave such issues for the ensuing discussion.

And boy, I was pleasantly surprised by what happened! A horde of nimble-fing ered Slashdotters quickly jumped in after the first wave of commentary, answering and dissecting almost all of the incoming criticism quite nicely, relieving me of a lot of work -- thanks much, guys! :^)

However, there remain a couple of important themes that my quick-response comrades didn't address, and so I'll try to cover those here -- starting with the most important and surprising one.

What the Hay??

This trend really did surprise me. Here are a handful of examples where it happened -- notice what they have in common when I put them side-by-si de?

• People, it amazes me that some one can equate Linux, a shining example of sharing and cooperation, with capitalism, a system based on hoarding and selfishness. [Rodion Raskolnikov (), "POLL!! POLL!! POLL!!"]
  
  [The] only thing i can assume is that the author had only 1 thing in mind and that was to get people to join his movement. "Well if i can show that capitalism==GNU then fellow GNUers will join my organization or whatever". [Paul (paul@waterw.com), "Propaganda" ;]

  Open source functions on a gift economy. Sure, some of the behavior could be explained with free market principles ... but it is fundamentally different than the sort of role that the original essayist is trying to force it into. When I write code and I give it away, I get nothing but the satisfaction of writing interesting code, and the satisfaction that someone else is using it. That's not capitalism. [Anonymous Coward (), "Re: Back-asswards!"]

  It's always amusing to me to see some ultra captial weenies taking an idea like Open Source, which is effectively as socialistic as you can get in today's society falling all over themselves to cry out that it isn't, that capitalism and open source are exactly the same thing, yammer yammer yammer. [adr (jbfink@nospammy.entropy.muc .muohio.edu), "amusing"]

  Sheesh. Grow up. "Open Source" ... only superficially shares some ideas with economic theory. There's more to living than just money, and there are many more models of economy than just two. [Markus Fleck (!spam-fleck@informatik.uni-bonn.de), "Bla bla bla..."]

What these and so many other lines of criticism share is a clear misundersta nding of my thesis: they somehow latched onto the idea that I am identifying capitalist free markets and the Open Source movement as being the same thing, and then they went running down the rhetorical road on that false premise. Maybe I was not quite clear enough in the original piece, but I trust that if you look back up at my editorial with a little care, you will find that I never make such a claim. I was not even hoping for such an inference. Indeed, the summary in my conclusion seems quite clear about my hopes:

• So if you cheer for the idea of Open Source, then please cheer for what makes Open Source work. If you do that, then you are also cheering for exactly what makes capitalism work... These [common underpinnings] form a kind of systemic encouragement which brings out the very best within us -- and that is precisely what drives the raging success of both Open Source and capitalism.

Of course the Open Source movement and capitalist free markets are not one and the same, and I wouldn't want anyone to think so. My point is that they share a common foundation which fuels their tremendous effectiveness; these common underpinnings are themselves neither Open Source, nor capitalism -- but they foster both, and identifying them allows us to see and better understand the strengths of both Open Source and capitalism. This point leads naturally into my argument that capitalism is not fundamentally at odds with Open Source, a system which shares the same foundational underpinnings -- and so the mistrust and hostility I have been seeing directed at capitalism by some Open Source fans seems misplaced.

Open Source in the Here and Now

An interesting complaint surfaced regarding those underpinnings: some seem to think that it isn't legitimate that I rely on the fact that licenses like the GPL use the ideas of private property and the defense of individual rights, since by some interpretations of the Open Source Founders, its current form of is only accommodating our current circumstances and is not yet the Ideal Deal:

• The GPL exists (in this form) just because we live in a more or less capitalist world. Therefore it is adopted to the needs of this capitalist world. To conclude that because the GPL shows capitalistic elements, Open Source is capitalistic is IMHO an infinite loop. [Sebastian Schaffert (wastl@woanders.de), "Re: amusing", my underline]

  Open source matches the Marxist notion far better that the libertarian-ca pitalist notion, although it matches it only imperfectly. The GPL is very much a legal means of enforcing the kind of relationship that many believe ought to be natural law. It's a loophole, not the core of the philosophy. [vlax (vlax@yahoo.com) , "Sometimes, you just have to laugh", my underline]

But my observation is resting on the actual, stunning success of Open Source in today's world, on today's GPL terms, and in today's political systems -- not in some dreamt-of, hoped-for future place that may be talked about in recommended readings at the FSF. If someone wishes to argue that some other prospective Open Source system might do as well as (or better than) what we have today, then I welcome their giving it a try. But even if someone somehow makes that argument work, it wouldn't itself do anything to disturb my thesis that the powerful and successful Open Source movement we have before us right now shares the very same foundation as capitalism.

There's Cooperation -- and then there's Cooperation

Several people expressed trouble with my saying that "fundamentally, capitalism means cooperation":

• This is one of those motherhood statements that means nothing when you think about it carefully. Consider some alternatives:

  • "fundamentally, communism means cooperation"
  • "fundamentally, anarchism means cooperation"
  • "fundamentally, fascism means cooperation"
  • "acephalous band-level hunter-gatherer groups are fundamentally dependent on cooperation"

  The truth is, human existence pretty much "means cooperation". [Danny Yee (danny@anatomy.usyd.edu.au), "capitalism means cooperation?"]

  I agree entirely with [the] gripe on the assertion "capitalism means cooperation". It is a null statement. What societal system could exist at all without some degree of cooperation. [The Famous Brett Watson (famous@nutters.org), 'Null statement: "capitalism means cooperation"' ]

Certainly there is a lot of cooperation among people in most any societal system. But capitalism, with its explicit ban on fraud and the initiation of force between people for the express purpose of leaving people with nothing but persuasion and freedom of association in their dealings with one another, is quite different. Communism, fascism, socialism, and even our mixed economy, etc., do not consistently demand that we behave as traders, acting to mutual benefit, persuading our neighbor to work with us. Non-capitalist systems legitimatimize the initiation of (often quite naked) force as a common and convenient means of dealing with one another: all you need is to get the political pull or the popular votes to have your way, and others must "cooperate&quo t; -- whether they ultimately benefit or not, and whether they want to or not.

The Slavery of Wages

Okay, one final, tiny point.

• • When someone else makes that choice for you it is called slavery,

• Interesting comment coming from a capitalist.. So when my boss says "do that" I am a slave, eh? You're basically defining capitalism as wage slavery.. not a very good start on an essay that is supposed to defend capitalism. [ir (mattc@nospam.pob ox.com), "Free Software"]

Notice that I said "someone else makes that choice", not just that "something forces your choice". Despite appearances , I was actually being pretty careful about it. When your boss says "do that", you clearly have a choice where a slave does not: you can quit. But you would starve, you say? Not to be too flip about it (well, maybe just a little :^), but it sounds as if your primary complaint of "injustice" is with reality -- not with your boss. He should have freedom of association just as you should, and you have no right to do business with him unless he wants to do business with you (othewise you are not being a trader, and he would be a slave).

I know of no capitalist who would argue that you have a right to be exempt from the laws of reality.

Well, maybe it isn't actually an introduction for everyone, but for a lot of us, Lalo Martins has written a nice article to reacquant ourselves with Ox, an Object Model for computers. Check it out if you're interested in learning about it. The following was written by Slashdot reader Lalo Martins. The Ox project

Shortly, Ox is a complete full object model, meaning it wishes to make possible to access anything you expect from a computer in an object-oriented interface. An object-oriented interface means everything you could want to access is an object and, as such, has a class, and benefits from inheritance and polymorphism.

To use my favourite example, in Ox you won't write a "word processor" application; instead you will write a "word-processing-document" class, and objects of this class (documents) would contain all information they need to edit and print themselves, and all other functions you would expect from a word processor, plus others that are made possible by a pure object-oriented environment.

Hovever, Ox does not want to trash all existing software; one of its minor goals is to have hooks to make possible compatibility with anything - and no, I'm not exagerating, the idea is being able to using anything from grep to perl to self (a programing language) to PNG images to old MSX games.

Context

There are many object models. There are many good object-oriented programming languages. There are many object-oriented databases. There are even many good object-oriented tools to make programs cooperate - such as CORBA and ILU. But they are not object-oriented environments.

The very phrase I used to describe CORBA and ILU shows their shortcomings; they're object-oriented tools to make programs cooperate. You still have to write programs, and not classes. Well, I'm tired of writing programs - excuse me sir, I want to write classes. I don't want a tool for cooperation between programs, but a tool for cooperation between persistant objects.

Actually, few people have realized it, but object-oriented databases come far closer to a true, full object-oriented environment than CORBA or ILU. Herectic am I? I would be honoured to be called so :-) people much better than me have. Most of them were not afraid to defenestrate dusty concepts and introduce new ones. I'm a little more of a coward; I'm not introducing a new concept, I'm just trying to explore an old one (OOP) to its full potential.

On the other hand, now I got addicted to my GNU/Linux system and I want to do it "the Unix way" - I want to be able to modify stuff by modifying files by hand, or by moving files around etc. I want to be able to clone an object with "cp" and send it to a friend attached in a MIME mail message. I grew used to knowing which file has what, and I want an object environment where I can keep working this way.

Finally, once the system is working, I don't want to wait for it to reimplement everything from malloc to the X window system before I can use it. And I sure don't want to throw away the zillions lines of working code running around. This ideal system would have to have "hooks" where I could plug compatibility with any existing piece of software. One of the early examples is the hability of writing an "audio-cd" class using the excellent "cdtool" package (cdplay, cdstop, cdpause...) as methods. Alas, instant object-oriented functionality.

These are the major reasons I'm working in Ox, and are the explanations for some of the design decisions. However, these don't say everything about Ox yet; there's another, very important factor:

I'm in the Free Software community (also referred to as Open Source Software).

The Free Software community has its own way of doing things. We do things to share; sharing is an important part of it. We are opposed to binary-only software (because we want to be able to know how something works, and fix it if it doesn't work right), to interface copyrights, API copyrights, and above all, we absolutely despise NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements - contracts where you will gain knowledge of something but you must promise not to tell anyone else, essentially) when applied to software. The Free Software Community believes that software has to be shared to achieve its full potential.

The idea of "open development", more formally known as "bazzar-style" development, is another important concept that was born in the Free Software community. It's about writing the code in the open, making development versions frequently available, so that people can read it, fix it, and even help write it - actually, it's about inviting people to do that. Ox doesn't do anything useful, but it has two mailing lists set up so that anyone who wants to participate may join as soon as desired.

Status

The Ox project was born about two years ago. In this period, it died twice already. In my opinion this happened because I did everything wrong in the point of view of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" paper. I wanted to first have a good spec, then start coding. Now I want to build the two things together, so that one helps the other - the coders find a missing feature, suggest it to the specwriters, and so on. Also, with no coding going on the interest vanished quickly.

The second time I concentrated in writing a spec alone. This was even worse.

This is the third try. I'm opening up the process and inviting you to participate - either in specbuilding, coding, or both. I would have given up on Ox entirely, but in a partially-related mail RMS said he thinks Ox is a very good idea.

The result of this talk with RMS is that the Ox project is now a GNU project. Don't know if many people care, but I do, a lot. It makes me really proud to stamp in the webpages "Ox: the GNU next generation object model".

Contact

Please by all means give it a try. Help coding, help building the spec. IMHO Ox can give a fantastic advantage to the Free Software world. Draw the icons that are missing in the webpage. If you have a place for hosting lists that you think is better than makelist contact me. Or a ftp site, CVS repository... whatever. But anyway, visit the webpage and see what you think. And if this article isn't enought for an opinion, you may jump straight to the what is Ox page (this article is based on it).

Thanks,
Lalo

Copyright © 1998 Lalo Martins lalo@webcom.com http://www.webcom.com/lalo

For information on permissions to reproduce this document, consult the pertaining section in the Ox website.

Any mention to products, trademarks or copyright material of third parties does not constitute any challenge to these rights.

David Ishee has written a piece on the Fear of X.0 where he talks about (surprise!) release versions of software. It's worth a gander... The following is a feature written by Slashdot Reader David Ishee

I'd like to offer an observation of the software industry and the often stated fears of a new version of software.

The idea jumped at me after reading the Linux Weekly News site and seeing a reference to an Info World article called: "Analysts at GigaWorld say skip NT 5.0"

To quote from the article:

"Analysts here at GigaWorld IT Forum '98 advised attendees to forgo Windows NT 5.0 and wait for a later release.

With 30 million lines of code, 85 percent of which is new, Windows NT 5.0 is likely to be buggy, said Rob Enderle, director of desktop and mobile technology at Giga Information Group, last week.

"It's too complex and too new," Enderle said. "Even inside Microsoft, there's a realization that the product won't ramp to volume until NT 6.0 because of the fear of initial releases."

Enderle advised waiting until service pack 3, or NT 5.5, which could be out a year or so after NT 5.0."

I have seen this type of attitude expressed in the press and by people on the net before about various software projects.

One project that stands out in glaring contrast is the GIMP. The GIMP just went 1.0 and if I'm correct, many people were eagerly awaiting the release and confident of its stability and usefulness.

Why is that?

The main difference in the development of Windows NT and the development of GIMP is the open source philosophy of "release early, release often" as expressed in the Cathedral and Bazaar paper that has gotten so much attention recently.

I've used GIMP 0.54, and various 0.99.X releases (even submitted a couple of bug reports) and I could see and follow the development, the improvements, and the increases in stability as many others probably did as well. When version 1.0 hit the net, there was no fear of the X.0 release. I knew it was going to be great because I had participated in the development by trying it out at the various stages. How many times was a new release posted to Slashdot with the hope that "this was the last version before 1.0?" Why did these last few releases occur? Obviously there was a few things found that had to be ironed out before it was declared ready for prime time.

Contrast this approach with new releases of Windows, or any proprietary software. You don't get to participate in the same manner. Sure, there are beta releases that come out (like with the Win95 pre-releases), but they are spaced much wider apart compared to GIMP releases, and not nearly as many releases occur. More importantly, you never get to test out the last version before X.0 where the software is released once more to make sure it can be declared done. You may see a few betas, but the changes to the last beta and version X.0 is likely to be significant.

There are probably many reasons that I'm not aware of about why people like Microsoft only push a few betas out the door (such as the pressure from marketing to get it out in time for the Christmas shopping season, or whatever).

The effect achieved by Microsoft (and probably others too) is that version X.0 is really just another beta release that we have to pay for and hope the next version (or service pack) gets the bugs fixed while not introducing others (I remember keeping up with the service packs for OS/2 before my Linux conversion).

The confidence the user gets from the "release early, release often" method is powerful. It makes me more confident in the 2.2 kernel knowing that we are past version 2.1.100+ in the development branch even though I haven't tried any development kernels.

The "release early" part of the equation can easily be used by proprietary vendors, but can "release often" as experienced in the open source world be duplicated also? I'm not sure. The common experience seems to support the theory that the large complex software systems being built today like desktop environments, operating systems, and the like are so hard to test thoroughly by a finite number of developers in one company that the additional help from potential users on the net and around the world are needed to test every permutation of the software's functionality and fix the bugs to be able to "release often".

So far, it appears that only the open source world has embraced the "release early, release often" philosophy (or created it?) and been able to implement it well enough to capitalize on the confidence to be gained in version X.0 by active participation by the prospective users.

We have all heard the skepticism that companies can't make money (or at least LOTS of money) from open source methods. User confidence in the quality of your software provides you with a powerful marketing tool. One tried and true way of getting that confidence is to use open source software. Everything seems to add up to the conclusion that open source software is an advantage, not a disadvantage. Then again, maybe I'm just a nutcase and these two examples are not representative. While no methodology is likely to be a "once size fits all", maybe open source is at least a "this size fits better". You decide.

Stan Seibert has written a piece addressing a very key issue in the Linux community. In the beginning there was Linus. Back then, 100% of the users contributed to Linux. As it grew, the percentage of programmers dropped as the number of 'end users' grew. This will only continue as Linux grows. This is great because it means that proves that Linux is more than just a hacker's OS. But the growing number of users unable to actively contribute puts more pressure on developers (email pleas for help, bugs discovered, feature requests etc). The Linux community needs to adapt to this in order to succeed. Hit the link below and read what Stan has to say about it.

The following is an Editorial by Slashdot reader Stan Seibert

Harnessing the Linux Labor Force By Stan Seibert
The Problem

Recently the author of Kirc expressed his frustration with answering all of the bug reports, installation questions, and patch submissions. Under the all of these pressures, he has now decided that he can no longer continue the development of Kirc. His frustrations are probably not unique; most developers are feeling the crunch of increasing demands on their time.

Ironically enough, this probably results from the increasing popularity of Linux. As Linux receives more press, more users try it out and experiment with it. Unfortunately, this creates a culture clash in the Linux community. Windows users (as most of these new converts are) pay for software and expect tech support; there is no other interaction with the developer. You give them money, they give you help. The protocol is part of the DOS/Windows culture. Even in shareware, most authors will only provide tech support to registered, paying users. The Linux community does not work that way (see Eric Raymond's Homesteading the Noosphere).

Linux (and all associated software) originally was written by programmers for other programmers. Since nearly all of the users were also developers in some way or another, the community was ideal for the free (think beer and speech) exchange of ideas. Programmers are used to digging through sparse documentation and cryptic source code files to find the answers to their questions. When completely stumped, they can at least phrase their question precisely in terms meaningful to other programmers, making it much easier to answer. Thus, everyone was able to use each other's tools with little or no burden on the developer, and in turn, made their own programs available.

The shifting profile of the Linux user now upsets the balance. No longer a Unix programmer, the new Linux user has a pretty good sense of how computers work, learned about computers on a Windows machine, and does not know how to program fluently. Such a user is probably baffled by the confusion and chaos that surrounds Linux development. Relying on their prior understanding of user-developer relations, they assume that software authors will have the time and inclination to provide them with complete, beginning-to-end tech support. As the number of users increases, this becomes harder and harder for developers to do. Paradoxically, the popularity of Linux could actually halt development.

Yet, if the proliferation of projects is any indicator, we have not reached that point yet. Here on Slashdot, we hear about new projects everyday to fill some software niche. Though some will succeed, many will fail, not for lack of ideas or worth, but for lack of manpower. It is probably safe to say that every live project in existence could use more help. I have lost track of the number of pieces of software still stuck in the "0.1 pre-alpha" stage of development. These projects could use an infusion of talent to help them get where they need to be.

The Solution

I do think that the changing situation can benefit Linux greatly. My solution to the problem relies on three assumptions:

1. There are lots of Linux users.
2. There are many development tasks that don't need programming skills.
3. Most Linux users who would be willing help do these development tasks.

The first assumption has been well established by surveys and polls. For evidence of the second, we simply need to look at the frustration of people like the Kirc developer. These projects need tech support, documentation, and targeted beta testing as well as coding. The third is just a guess. I think most users would not mind donating a little time and talent to helping the Linux community. There are probably numerous users who would like to help but do not know how to get involved. We need to change that if the Linux community is to survive. Since not every Linux developer can be lucky enough to get paid full time for what they do, we have to distribute the work of development among more people.

I want to create a web site that will act as a sort of project clearinghouse. Project developers could register and periodically update their projects with a database, including the skills they currently need. Users would have a place to learn how to get involved in development. It would have resources to help users educate themselves and learn new skills. They could also register themselves as potential volunteers, also listing They could also register themselves as potential volunteers, also listing their skills and desired type of work. At this point, some nifty Perl scripts would crunch and munch the two databases together, producing a match between talent and project. This would be a powerful way of leveraging the Linux Labor Force (as the title of my article calls it) to improve the Linux community. A developer that needs people with network programming skills, documentation ability, and Ensoniq soundcards to test their network sound system could automatically be informed of people who could do these things. With a better host than my ISP can provide, we could even expand the services to include roulette-style mailing lists (as I saw suggested in a comment here several weeks ago) where a single e-mail alias randomly distributes questions on a given project to one of several qualified people. All registered projects could provide a list of tech support people and an alias (ex: gmoney@linux.yada.org) would send general project questions (installation, etc.) to one of the people on the list. We could even have the mother of all such mailing lists, a newbie-linux@linux.yada.org (these are only example addresses) that would instantly forward a newbie question to one of a thousand Linux gurus around the world.

I don't have time to start this for another 2 weeks (until after finals), so I'm looking for someone willing to help me jump start this. I have 50 meg of web space, though I don't know if I can execute scripts, and I am certain I cannot set up any mailing lists without paying them some silly amount. So I'm looking for someone to help me who can set up a discussion list and a preliminary web site to get this thing started (See, I already need this site. :) ). So far as I know, other people have tried parts of this idea, but none have integrated the parts together or implemented the script idea.

Your input

• What do you think of this?
• Has it been done?
• What should be included/excluded?
• Are some of you out there uncertain of how to help linux development and would like this sort of think?

I am interested to know what the Slashdot readers think. Please email me if you want to help or have any longer ideas that wouldn't fit in a Slashdot comment.

atporter writes "Eric S. Raymond has written a sequal to his original paper on open source software development. This one deals with the issues of property and ownership in the hacker community."

atporter writes "Eric S. Raymond has written a sequal to his original paper on open source software development. This one deals with the issues of property and ownership in the hacker community."

atporter writes "Eric S. Raymond has written a sequal to his original paper on open source software development. This one deals with the issues of property and ownership in the hacker community."

atporter writes "Eric S. Raymond has written a sequal to his original paper on open source software development. This one deals with the issues of property and ownership in the hacker community."

atporter writes "Eric S. Raymond has written a sequal to his original paper on open source software development. This one deals with the issues of property and ownership in the hacker community."

Eric S. Raymond (The author of the now legendary Cathedral and the Bazaar) has written another one here about why the term "Free Software" should be replaced with "Open Source Software". The concept has big backers already-Linus, John 'maddog' Hall, and Bruce Perens. and I'm willing to pledge to do my darndest to call it Open Source Software from now on (although I suspect I'll remember to stop writing 97 on my checks before I break that habbit).