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Gartner Group Debunking Open Source Myths
6j3net sent us a report from the Gartner Group that attempts to debunk Open Source Myths. It looks like they got things pretty much right. It looks as if this might be a great url to send the bossman when he asks questions.
Lets face it, there are lots of management types out there who don't read/understand/etc places like /. and so on. They fear OSS because of all these myths. Now someone "respected" by many has posted a report saying that OSS should be reassessed, etc.
:)
Hell, irrespective of whether Gartner are paid mouthpieces for big-name companies or not, this kind of report can only help. All that was said is dead-obvious to us, but it's not to people who haven't been a part of the scene. This gives OSS a bit more of a legit status.
The thing to now be aware of is that this kind of report may very well lead to lots more "newbies" coming into the OSS world, from both the IT user/support side and the development side ("Carl, go check out OSS and see how it can help us sell more of product X"
It is now the responsibility of those who have said "Isn't this report kinda old-news & obvious" to ensure that the newbies don't go down the wrong path. Ensure that they are guided to reputable companies & examples. Help them avoid the pitfalls of the OSS world.
Gartner are opening the gates. It's up to the rest of us to ensure that OSS doesn't get a bad name as the "clueless hoards" crash the party and start milling aimlessly about.
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
The Gartner Group seem to have taken the side of RMS in the Linux or GNU/Linux debate... "Only about 2% of the software on a Linux distribution is actually the Linux OS.."
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
As a home-office worker, I'll attest to that (at least my experience of that). I would love to go all-Linux on my laptop, instead of clumsily switching from Linux to WinNT as I do now. But there are a few problems:
So in the end, I end up using the Linux side considerably less. If I'm going to have to flip back and forth between OS's, why not stick in the one I have to use anyway?
Gartner Group have previously tried to play down the part of OSS in the commercial environment and now we see this report which is to the contrary; it would seem that gartner group (who have some interesting sources of funding) were originally playing into the hands of their corporate peers in justifying the use of commercial software as an exclusive means. :) have changed tack in order to 'gently ease' OSS under the corporate door.
:)
Now this is no longer what the corporate 'customers' want to hear so Gartner (who are never inacurate in reports, just evasive
This isn't strange; Gartner group just need to play the tune their customers want to hear.
1,000,000 frenchmen can't be wrong
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Think about it..Add up just the OS and the stuff needed to get it to init. Kernel, LILO, the kernel daemons, the contents of /boot.. I bet together that comes close to 10 M.
Save Jon!
.sig: Now legally binding!
They write two pieces. One praising OSS and another bashing it. Then they wait to see how the winds change. A year ago, OSS was just a fad. Now, hey - we knew you'd make it all along. Let us be friends, eh?
> Isn't OSS about less obscurity? Does this
> kind of article mean that I'm wrong and SOL?
ROTFL. AFAIK, hackers _invented_ the TLA! IMHO the key difference is that ours are intended to be funny (and ideally recursive), plus we have the Jargon file to explain them to newcomers, wheras suits intend them to look impressive and use them to indimidate newcomers.
> Listening to RMS, slashdotters, and ESR's writings would have you believe OSS will revolutionize the world and proprietary software is /all/ bad.
/.. Who exactly has been saying otherwise?
/. and trash Linux out of ignorance" crowd that has been posting here so vigorously lately. If you have to set up straw men to knock down, you leave the impression that you're someone who feels threatened by Linux but hasn't actually tried it.
a) OSS already has revolutionized a big chunk of the world. (Or counterrevolutionized, if you realize how traditional it actually is.)
b) Show us some links on the "all bad" claims. I feel like you're mischaracterizing what most of us actually say.
> I direct you to several stunning *proprietary* software achievements which the OSS community has yet to duplicate.
a) You could also direct us to innumerable proprietary software failures, if only you wanted to see things in that light.
b.1) My mom can't use any proprietary desktops, either.
b.2) You seem to be blaming OSS for the fact that CAD and game publishers target the biggest market and neglect the smaller ones.
> have you been watching the source checkins/checkouts for hardware drivers?
Ummm, yes. And that's how it's supposed to work. The difference with CSS is that all this is hidden from casual observers.
Oh, yeah. Pick up a book on software engineering and you'll see this listed as the "evolutionary model", or whatever term the author goes in for. It has been around a lot longer than Linux has.
> most people in the OSS community a) don't have access to debuggers to catch this stuff earlier
Surely you've got some major typos in there that makes it sound like you're saying something you didn't intend to say?
> Often don't wait and properly engineer their drivers prior to implimentation.
Oftenest, they're working without proper documentation for the hardware. There's a heck of a difference in designing a driver based on internal engineering documents (some available before the device was actually built) and trying to design one based on publicly released documents that deliberately try to hide anything with the remotest possibility of turning out to be valuable IP.
It's a bit hard to get it right the first try when you're groping in the dark.
> That is to say they're impatient.
Check out some of the developers' lists' archives. You'll find some amazing displays of patience.
> I think it's because the programmers didn't know or didn't care enough to make it work correctly the first time and then need to go back and rewrite the code again.
Ignoring your slanders against my motivation and abilities, I can only wonder what kind of paradise you visualize for a CSS shop. Again, I've worked both sides of the fence, and (to the extent that it's possible to generalize between individual shops at all) the only consistent difference is that you get to peek behind the curtain with OSS, but not with CSS.
> Let's take another myth: that we're somehow superior to windows or macheads.
That's another one that needs to be supported by links.
> I'd also like to point out that there are other "source" movements out there that make progress approximately on par with linux
Again, you seem to mischaracterize the prevailing attitudes found on
I don't fault you for criticising Linux; I fault you for doing so cluelessly. There are many substantive criticisms that could be offered for Linux, but for some reason you've joined the "let's go to
Which is amazing, because you used to post some thoughtful things here. (Or have I been fooled by someone with a look-alike handle?)
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I am a GartnerGroup analyst. In particular, I'm one of the GG analysts's who has covered OSS and Linux for quite some time. Consequently it should be a surprise that I am also an avid visitor to slashdot.
In lives before GG I was a technical architect and developer every bit down in the trenches as the typical slashdot reader and probably more than most.
I'm amazed at the notion that GG has been anti-Linux or OSS in anyway. In fact when you read the bulk of our research its quite bullish on OSS and Linux. Keep in mind that we've published LOTS of information of Linux and OSS; unless you're a GG client you probably haven't seen 99% of our research. Most of the comments I've read on slashdot are based entirely on ignorance or from a small snippet of published material.
I find it comical that advising our clients that Linux WON'T replace Win32 as the dominant desktop operating system in the next three years is somehow Linux bashing. I'd actually expect responses to be no sh** but more often it's the opposite.
Has Microsoft payed GartnerGroup to write Linux or OSS research? No. GartnerGroup does not write research specifically for ANY vendor. Furthermore, as any of our clients know GartnerGroup has consistently been one of Microsoft's strongest critics. Microsoft is a BIG company. Like most big companies they do some things very well and some things terribly bad. Gartner's value to our clients is an unbiased third party analysis and our Linux/OSS research IMO is an excellent example of balanced even handed view of an incredibly overhyped and radically evolving subject matter.
Are Linux and OSS overhyped? Of course they are. Every newly discovered technology trend goes through an inevitable cycle of hype and backlash as it enters mainstream IT environments.
Is there real substance under this hype? Of course there is. Gartner's charter is to help separate the wheat from the chafe. The notion that any negative position is bashing or selling out to a vendor is not only ridiculous but childish.
I thought long and hard before posting this response insofar as I'm sure it will bring inevitable flames but then again this will only prove my point. Bottom line, GartnerGroup is not the enemy, we will continue to track OSS trends, vendors, success stories (and failures) in an impartial and even handed manner. We will analyze and report on the good, bad and the ugly with regards to OSS. You'll probably like what we have to say in some cases and you'll hate it in others.
Do you have particular success stories of OSS projects in your IT organization? Do you have a specific OSS subject that you think we should be covering but aren't? I'd love to hear about them (gganalyst@hotmail.com). Do you have some asinime flame or insult to throw my way? Don't bother.
All previous models of large-scale, even global marketing -- that's what we're really talking about, after all -- are based on corporate methods and billion-dollar budgets.
What's needed, IMO, is a marketing effort that's coordinated with people like Red Hat. Contributing code won't be enough for this, though. Cash will be required.
The consumer probably has at least two problems with Linux, or any Open Source Software.
One, it sounds kind of good ("Open" is better than "Closed". It's not more complicated than that in marketing), but what is it supposed to do in her life that would make her give up Windows, which, with all of its drawbacks, is still Good Enough? What's so compelling -- from a usability/functionality/price-- point of view to persuade someone standing in front of a cheap PC box at Office Depot pick and OSS over Windows?
The consumer, for whom a computer is just another buy for the house, more often than not, is gonna pick the safe choice, every time. Hell, they'll take their kid's advice before they take yours. Advertising and consistent marketing will help move the bubble, but it's gonna take time, and even then only if it's awfully, awfully good.
Actually, this effort could be kind of interesting. (I obviously like hopeless causes. I'm not signing on for this one, as I already have one, thanks.) How does one take the OSS philosophy and make it work in advertising? How would it be funded? Who would approve the ad copy? Who would hire the ad agency? How would goals be defined? Who watches the budget? How would development be crafted to aim more at the consumer market, and not just the IT market?
If this group has proven anything, it's that it can shape a new paradigm. This, I would guess, has never, EVER been tried before.
Bias is not how we get to truth guys.
-- Slashdot sucks.
Signal 11's list of good proprietary software has many missing (I could add a dozen right now), but one remarkable piece of software which any programmer can learn from was not added: Mathematica, from Wolfram Research. Please bear with the off-topic paragraph, I come back, and it's even relevant. :)
...). This has freed me to think about the matrix math that I want to do, and I don't have to debug my matrix math algorithms when I get a screwy answer. This power and simplicity was developed under the proprietary model, and Mathematica is considered by many to be the standard advanced math software.
:)
2 3223&cid=23
2 38&mode=thread
In an article on GameSpy, Tim Sweeney was saying that we need a new programing language which is more intuitive and has higher level commands. His example was adding the elements of arrays A and B to make array C. Intuitively, the algorithm is just C=A+B, but in C++ it isn't nearly that simple. When I read this, I was struck (for the umpteenth time) how simple/powerful Mathematica is. In Mathematica I can just add the arrays, C=A+B, and the program takes care of the details (add element A[i,j] to element B[i,j] and assign the sum to element C[i,j]; move to element i+1,j
Relevant now
The system of computation Mathematica uses could be a useful model to a programmer trying her hand at creating the afore mentioned 'next generation' programing language. And I had to buy it (well, I didn't _have_ to buy it, but pirating non-MicroSquish software seems unfair to the coder who wrote my new program; ethics, what a nuisance), I couldn't just download it and start solving sets of coupled partial differential equations. (How I love those PDE's.)
MicroSquish/AOL isn't the only proprietary software company out there (although it seems that way sometimes), and many of those companies are staffed by people of good moral character who make money doing what they love. And they're good at it, giving us good products. (Please don't misunderstand me, I am _NOT_ saying that MicroSquish='good product', just that many proprietary software companies do a good job. Qualcomm's Eudora, for instance.)
OSS isn't the sole repository of talented programmers, there are many who work at traditional companies. Ignoring, dismissing or insulting these programmers will not produce better programs or more OSS, it will just divide the two groups even more. As the non-traditional "fringe" group, it is our responsibility to try to build a community where both sides can come to talk, and not feel discriminated against.
end rant
Louis Wu
Signal 11's comment:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/01/28/07
Mathematica:
http://www.mathematica.com/
The GameSpy article:
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/devweek_b.shtm
The Slashdot discussionof the GameSpy article:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/25/150
How to use TLAs to legitimize something.
Isn't OSS about less obscurity? Does this kind of article mean that I'm wrong and SOL?
TLA - Three Letter Acronym
OSS - Open Source Software
SOL - Shit Out of Luck
From the looks of it, Gartner Group is trying to save their sorry asses. When they released the report on Linux vs NT, many sites came up with contra-reports showing everyone how much clueless FUD Gartner Group were really spawning. Now they try to save their credibility by stating some facts the OSS people has been saying all along. Gee, that's really clever.
I don't buy it. If there's supposed to be any use for Gartner Group they better tell me things I don't already know. And their opinion is just that. What happened to researching for answers yourself instead of handing the power of your own decisions over to some over-paid consultant? It's not like you can sue Gartner Group if things are wrong. Just look at the nice disclaimer at bottom of their reports.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Open Source is not necessarily the same as Free Software, though the two overlap much of the time. Gartner is speaking in favor of Open Source and, frankly, I see absolutely no reason to keep source code closed off from people. Free Software, though, is not necessarily the same.
Only the GPL and its descendants guarantee Free Software, while there are many Open Source licenses (the Sun license, the BSD licenses, and the MPL, for instance) that are similar but don't necessarily accomplish quite the same thing. Rather than getting into a detailed discussion of licenses per se, I'd just remind everyone that Open Source comes in many flavors, and hopefully the market will reward the freer varieties over the less and non free ones. Gartner is on the right track, though.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I agree with your points about OS superiority being a myth, and overall I agree with the spirit of your post. However:
In reference to your points about proprietary software having some incredible success stories, your examples are all right on the money, and I guess that's my point. Until OSS developed momentum as a business model, there wasn't much percevied value (i.e. profit, i.e. money) in either releasing your code or open sourcing it. It took OSS success stories to convince companies that had long histories in the closed source model (the only model they knew that worked) to open up.
A parallel example is open-source news. A lot of newspapers were slow to get online because they were closed-source (pay-for-core-content) and that was the business model they knew. Now look at them clamber to get online and give their information away free, and develop other revenue sources. The example is not an exact parallel, but I hope my points come through anyway:
But i think that's your point anyhow; that CS can produce good stuff too, right? But maybe now we'll see more of these CS companies open up their source as well? Or maybe not. That's a different question, and I won't extend this post with it right now.
It looks like someone at Gartner is finally starting to get it. This peice, while seeming to be basically a summary piece (undoubtedly to sell other documents) actually gets just about everything right and unlike most of their stuff which does an awful lot of waffling and guessing is written in a straightforward style. It neither oversells nor dismisses OSS, and that sets it way above most of the stuff I've seen from similar organizations.
I will argue that Open Source is a better development method. But methods alone do not make a good product. Only good software programmers do. If you follow strict methods of implementation, and have good programmers, you will have a good product. Some people think that Open Source is the end all. But it is just a better way of doing things. The products you mentioned are good, but I believe would become better if they were opened.
You can't take a badly written product and just dump it out as Open Source and expect it to magically become better. Netscape, is a perfect example of this. Instead of making Netscape better, it had to start almost from scratch to create todays Mozilla. A lot of code had to be rewritten.
So I agree that a development plan is needed, but Open Source with the propper support will do this. When we have vendors releasing specs or drivers up front for Open Source programs, we have better quality. You're right that people don't want to wait for this, and just start writing code. But if the support from vendors was there in the beginning, you won't have this. I think that XFree86 is a good example of this. They have a lot of vendors that do support them, and those drivers are up to par.
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
That's not a bad idea, Gartner does not seem to expressly forbid copying their material if it is only a small part that "does not have a negative impact on the market" for thier products. I suppose a commercial version of RedHat might fail the "educational, personal or non-commercial" provision, but then sounds like you just need to get permission, which I can't see why they would object since it is just free advertising for their non-free services.
I mean the American Association Against Acronym And Alliteration Abuse, of course. ;-)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Cold, highs in the low 20s. Expect lows in the single digits tonight, and up to 40 below with the wind chill factor. Snow tomorrow, four to eight inches.
Good words for OSS from Gartner? I don't believe it.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
You are fairly right that different OSes are good at different things. But then you turn the world upside down and concludes Linux is not nessesarily better than Windows. Here is my personal conclusion of some OSes of today: Linux (and other UNIXes or clones): Stability, networking, programming, multitasking. OS/2: Flexible GUI, multitasking, (programming?). MacOS: easy to use GUI, _easy_. BeOS: video, multitasking, programming. Windows: widely used, many applications. From this list we learns that in fact anything is better than windows for any particular application, as long as the specific user application does exist on the said platform.
And last, but not least, Open Source is better because an OSS program can not by any means trade code beauty (maintainability, functionality, robustness, generality) for UI beauty. Of course, the OSS movement still have to learn to code good UIs, too.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Never knock on Death's door:
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Hmmm, you don't start out so hot. Have you even read the different things that ESR and RMS have to say? ESR says the Open Source helps a lot of software get better, but all he wants is software that doesn't suck, so he'll take closed source for some stuff. RMS says he'll take free (not Open Source, and there's a perceptual and actual difference) software, even if it's worse, because of the freedoms granted. Maybe you need to go back and read some more.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I direct you to several stunning *proprietary* software achievements which the OSS community has yet to duplicate.
The desktop, we're working on. CAD, no, we're not on that level yet, but there are several projects working on it. Plugins? We don't have Flash because not many people cared. Games? Have you played Red Alert? The programming's not even vaguely interesting to a real coder. Recreating that game is an art project, plain and simple.
Just to name a few. On the hardware side - have you been watching the source checkins/checkouts for hardware drivers? Then you'll notice they follow a peculiar pattern - Initial Release (aka, it works, but it's slow). Revision 2 (it's buggy, but faster), and finally Revision 3 (finally get it right). The reason is that most people in the OSS community a) don't have access to debuggers to catch this stuff earlier and b) Often don't wait and properly engineer their drivers prior to implimentation. That is to say they're impatient. The result is hundreds of releases of software each day. Some people think this is because we "release early, release often" - I think it's because the programmers didn't know or didn't care enough to make it work correctly the first time and then need to go back and rewrite the code again. Now, if you listen quietly for a moment you can hear people already hammering at their keyboards crying foul. But I'm not done yet.
Huh? I don't even know how to begin responding to this. Of course it's the release early, release often attitude. Do you not bother to notice the version numbers somewhere below 0.01? This is how the development process works. I'm sorry if you've had a bad experience somewhere, or a driver didn't work right, but that's not because the programmers were idiots. You're just not getting the privilege of seeing the early revisions of closed source stuff.
Signal 11, I can't help but think you're displaying a real ignorance with this post. No real member of the community considers themself better than others just because of who they are. I'm not sure where you're getting some of these assumptions, but you're dead wrong.
(PS: unchecked fact, but how many Linux kernel + GNU util developers are there, vs. core BSD'ers? I'd not be surprised to find they're roughly on par...)
--
Ian Peters
If you are planing to show this to your PHB some time in the future you might want to make a private mirror on your intranet now. In the past Gartner has taken links down. I'm not sure what thier window is before EOLing a document is, but I used to link to some of their stuff on Java and then it went away.
-Peace
Dave
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."
As we all know, the freedom in free software is the *user's* freedom: to use, to combine, to know, to debug, to extend. As such, it should be no surprise that the development progress to date meets up with the crucial needs of the system's user/developers, thus the focus on serving and networking: OS developers may prefer to play and write games, but they're getting paid to make sure the bosses' networks and apps run correctly.
As the user base extends to those with other needs: non-software industries' apps, games, personal software, PC drivers, ease-of-use, ease-of-development, etc, the quality and availability of those applications will improve.
Although this doesn't refute your point that free software is not always better right now, it does imply that someday it will at least catch up.
And, if you believe in the power of empowered users, it's easy to see that it will likely surpass proprietary software, as it has already done in the areas of greatest need. I suggest that it also will or already does serve needs that proprietary software would have taken forever to get to: child-simple programming languages (what's the prorietary advantage in that?); truly portable applications; unobtrusive, ubiquitous, standard networking; small, reusable, interactive tools.
In general, free software will be much better at creating a marketplace of commodity software: no lock-ins, no single-source, no platform-specificity, no buying the unnecessary to get the needed, no forced upgrade paths, better future-proofing, better accountability, better responsiveness, real choice.
The day when "open source is always better" is not here, but it's coming.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
There's one other reason: the developer(s) might not want to put in the effort to sell software. Selling software can be quite a pain: you have to deal with bounced checks, credit card transactions, reporting estimated taxes every quarter, requests for fixes and enhancements (since they don't have the source code), hiring people to port the app to other platforms, and so on.
I think non-programmers sometimes don't understand what goes on in a programmer's mind. They see us labor for years to learn this stuff, so they can't comprehend someone spending months on a project, posting it on an ftp site, and then saying, "Here, have fun, I don't care if you use it or not." They look at software development as some kind of laborious black art. Sure, you need to be super-smart to be a programmer, but once you get to that level, whipping up a 1000-line Perl script (or in my case, Rexx) is something you do when you're bored.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Good points. Both sides need to chill down. No matter what model you follow, it's the driving force behind you that will ultimately leverage the result. No model is going to do this for you.
Now, there's little doubt in my mind that in the end, free mindshare and collaboration, even on forked projects, are superior to proprietary (forked) projects. But if the driving force is missing, you won't accomplish anything. Any company wishing to go Open Source, must do some real thinking before they go on with it. This is the real world, newcomers are eaten for breakfast every day.
I think the solution lies in the consumer. People should start using Open Source, and support companies that contribute to it with MONEY. Not because proprietary technologies are "evil", but because Open Source is superior and more beneficial in the end. Money is in the bloodstream of our society. People should learn that while corporations talk, money walks the walk.
Power to the people! Yeah!! Flower power!!! Etc...
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Actually, the TCO of ownership is a point *for* free software, in this context. If only 20% of the TCO is buying the software, it means that there still is the remaining 80% to extract from the customer, so giving away the software as a "loss leader" may make perfectly good sense.
But then, she did used to bootstrap digico's by entering the boot code in octal on the front panel.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Pythagorous ran a Mystery school, i.e. a quasi-religion where you had to be initiated to learn
most of the teachings. Not all that different from a proprietary corporation. He believed numbers
could explain and control Nature and the supernatural.
Greek philosophers freely "borrowed" each others
ideas and salvaged some of Pythagorus's ideas, e.g. Euclid.
You are probably right, although that is obviously not what I meant. The PHB who is the main anti-OSS/Linux/Commie-pinko-liberal agent is the one who I figured would try to stretch even farther than before to maintain the Microsoft/Sun status quo and end up looking more stupid than usual (if that is even possible).
Yeah, I can see how it could backfire if not handled correctly. Hmm... any suggestions from someone who has been down this road?
While we're discussing myths.. how about we debunk another one: Open Source is superior to everything by virtue alone. Listening to RMS, slashdotters, and ESR's writings would have you believe OSS will revolutionize the world and proprietary software is /all/ bad.
Not really. It's better because it's free. That's all I really care about. Non-free is evil. If a bunch of people want to come champion Linux on technical grounds, go ahead and shoot them down (not that i'm particularly convinced web plugins or the windows/mac desktop is any kind of elegant technological acheivment, but that's beside the point). I just don't care if Linux is "better" in that sense or not.
I suggest reading what RMS has to say again. It's not "GNU is technologically better." it's "GNU is free." That's it. and that's also what matters to me.
Let's take another myth: that we're somehow superior to windows or macheads. Comeon people, this is dogmatic and fanatical in the extreme. We have an OS that does *some* things better than the others. But NO OS is superior on the basis of it's name alone.
No, that's not it. If you run free software, you're not "better", you're simply on the moral high ground. I'm all for being dogmatic about that.
It is actually encouraging that it isn't really hype. Just the facts. It doesn't tell you to or not to use OSS models, just why some people do.
Or maybe we saw different sections of their reviews... The last time I had access (about a year ago) there was a whopping lot of material on things like "Parallel Sysplex" and cost structures for CMOS mainframes and the likes.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
My mom had trouble at the login. After that, we managed to get up and running with a box-stock mandrake system. I showed her how to login and asked her to find and open netscape. Keep in mind I already set everything up so it could find the gateway and all that. It took her awhile.
It was fun watching her try to print, too. "Nothing happened". I hear that alot on tech support, but that's the first time I had to agree with her - going through the system logs (NOT SOMETHING A NEWBIE CAN DO) I found that lpd was turned off. Enabling it caused mountains of garbage to be emitted out of the laser-printer.
Let's talk about other fun things newbies can do with linux: edit the /etc/ppp/chap-secrets file to login to their isp. Use linuxconf (text-based) to get their connection online. Okay, I'm making this alittle hard - you could use kppp. =) After you login you find out you can't - it keeps disconnected. Research reveals that ipx-negotiation was buggy on their end...
The list goes on. In short, linux fails the "mom test". It is not a myth - it is a fact. If you know what you're doing under linux these things can be minimalized and marginalized.. but for a newbie they are taunting mountains of knowledge to be overcome. And I don't know about you, but moms don't want to spend months learning rm, ls, cp, mv, ps, vi, ad nauseum, just to get X to start so they can e-mail her friends on AOL.
Ignore it all you want - but linux on the desktop is still a joke. There are *serious* UI issues to be resolved here before the average computer user (not the savvy ones like on slashdot) can use linux.
On the hardware side - have you been watching the source checkins/checkouts for hardware drivers? Then you'll notice they follow a peculiar pattern - Initial Release (aka, it works, but it's slow). Revision 2 (it's buggy, but faster), and finally Revision 3 (finally get it right). The reason is that most people in the OSS community a) don't have access to debuggers to catch this stuff earlier and b) Often don't wait and properly engineer their drivers prior to implimentation. That is to say they're impatient. The result is hundreds of releases of software each day. Some people think this is because we "release early, release often" - I think it's because the programmers didn't know or didn't care enough to make it work correctly the first time and then need to go back and rewrite the code again. Now, if you listen quietly for a moment you can hear people already hammering at their keyboards crying foul.
That's kind of missing the point entirely. What you describe isn't even a side effect, it's the whole point. What makes open source "open"? You release the code, and you conduct development out in the open where everybody has the opportunity to participate. You release sub-1.0 versions and later unstable versions in the hope that others will try it out, make useful suggestions about adding features, and help you to fix the bugs.
In the majority of cases the developers will clearly mark which versions are stable and which versions have more features but are still buggy. Obtaining free software is a case of caveat emptor just as it is with any other kind of software.
But the *difference* with open source (as opposed to closed source) is that (i) the developers won't try to pretend that bugs don't exist; (ii) being subject to greater scrutiny, they'll put more effort into fixing them; and (iii) if you can't wait, you have the option of trying to fix it yourself, or paying someone else to do it.
I know that access to the source won't be much use to those without the resources to make use of it. But, if stability is your sine qua non, then obviously, get the stable version and leave development versions alone. And with closed source you don't even have the option.
May I further point out that my experience is that closed source companies often opt not to fix some bugs at all. In those cases it'll *never* get fixed. Which kind of leaves you in the lurch, doesn't it?
I'm surprise that you of all people would say something like this. I think you must have left your brain on your pillow this morning! Do I hear the sound of Signal 11 smacking his forehead in chagrin?
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I wonder if this isn't just an attempt to get 'back in our favor' after the whole thing where they basicaly posted microsoft written material...
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
..is to solve someone's vexing problem. The majority of software is NOT written to allow it's creator to drive around in a Ferrari but to get some work done. If my motivation for writing some code is to solve a personal problem or more likely a problem I'm having at work, then open sourcing the best thing I could possibly do. Others who can use a similar solution can make suggestions or even give me patches to make it even better. There is a tangible reward for open sourcing a project. The developer gets patches back! Come to think of the submitters of patches know that others are contributing so they too enjoy what the primary developer/maintainer enjoys....better software. If you look at it as working for patches rather than money then a lot of the mystery of just what motivates people to write open software goes away. The fact that non-coders can enjoy the fruits of this labor is secondary. Even non-coders can note bugs so they can get better software too. Remember: most software will not earn scads of money even if it were closed up and sold for profit. I would rather be an open sourcer getting patches and bug reports than a shareware coder getting two or three registrations a month. It's obvious which tends to produce better software.
Finally a topic that matches my login. :)
:)
Open source software treats the user like a developer. If you have the inclination to improve the software then you can. You know, "maybe you will find this useful."
Secondly, I would not say that commercial drivers are any better. Every drivers and supporting software that I have gotten with a piece of hardware did not work, and I had to get updates off the web. This includes my video card (Creative Riva TNT2 Ultra), CD ROM burning software (the Adaptec software that came with it had a major bug), motherboard (had to flash the BIOS to make the "do not wake on keyboard" setting take effect), external modem (Windows drivers AND flash the bios on the hardware), DVD decoder required several software updates before they finally got it right (crashes and bad playback. Creative again), and so on.
Now don't get me started on actual software. Every software package I have bought (dozens) has come out with bugfixes that you have to download. I wonder why they bother distributing programs on CD anymore. If you have to hit the web to finish installing your program they might as well let you download it and pay for it online.
So, to what standard do YOU hold open source software?
This paper may reflect a lot of the values of the open and free software communities, and it may eventually have an impact and sink in at the top... but it is the way it is because the junior analyst who wrote it is a script kiddy of the analyst world and he was sitting in the back orifice, he downloaded the docs from the various sites, reformatted, hit "print" and carried it out to the front office : )
Right now, he's slaving on the next project.
I get the same feeling. Almost felt like printing it immediately and glueing to the wall with superglue.
The most concise and precise analysis of OSS I have seen so far.
I wish there were more documents like that. I do not know how much gartner chrages for their services, but unless the redistribution is forbidden this is worth including in any Linux or BSD distribution.
I mean only the index. Gartner can still keep the ownership of the child documents (noted in the text) and get their money from them. So by redistributing this document as a part of an OS or software distribution Gratner should actually earn money (lots of PHBs want figures and they are in the child docs which Gartner does not give out free like this index).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I direct you to several stunning *proprietary* software achievements which the OSS community has yet to duplicate.
- Autocad. For that matter, any serious CAD program.
- A desktop my mom can use.
- web plugins (until recently, we had no flash!)
- Games. Quake and Loki's offerings may be cool, but they're a small subset of what the Windows world has. I'm still waiting for a Red Alert clone.
Just to name a few. On the hardware side - have you been watching the source checkins/checkouts for hardware drivers? Then you'll notice they follow a peculiar pattern - Initial Release (aka, it works, but it's slow). Revision 2 (it's buggy, but faster), and finally Revision 3 (finally get it right). The reason is that most people in the OSS community a) don't have access to debuggers to catch this stuff earlier and b) Often don't wait and properly engineer their drivers prior to implimentation. That is to say they're impatient. The result is hundreds of releases of software each day. Some people think this is because we "release early, release often" - I think it's because the programmers didn't know or didn't care enough to make it work correctly the first time and then need to go back and rewrite the code again. Now, if you listen quietly for a moment you can hear people already hammering at their keyboards crying foul. But I'm not done yet.Let's take another myth: that we're somehow superior to windows or macheads. Comeon people, this is dogmatic and fanatical in the extreme. We have an OS that does * some * things better than the others. But NO OS is superior on the basis of it's name alone.
I'd also like to point out that there are other "source" movements out there that make progress approximately on par with linux and it's related software despite the fact that it has a much, MUCH smaller developer pool to draw from: the BSDs. I'll now turn matters over to my fellow slashdotters for an explanation...
Yes.
This is just an index to lots of documents listed at the end. And these documents actually cost money to obtain (just gessing, but Gartner has to earn its living somehow).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I like the line where they say free as in "freedom", not as in free of charge". That's a more direct formulation than the free speech/beer analogy.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Bill and Ted would be insulted by this, when they went in their time machine they visited Pythagorus who taught them how to do cool things with triangles. His research in progress was open to all and could be expanded upon by any who wished to take his work on. I am offended by the idea that Open Source is an invention out of 1984. I wish I hadn't stopped using my Tae Bo tapes otherwise I would be kicking some ass (only if you provoked me).
Perhaps the MOST compelling reasons for corporations to participate in OSS projects is the fact that many necessary pieces of software are not commercially viable. In the closed-source world, if something is not believed to be commercially viable, it is not made.
Now, say BigCo needs software that will load balance their IDKFA servers. There's no way anyone could market software to load balance IDKFA servers, for various market reasons. BigCo can either a) foot the bill to write their own software from scratch or b) share the responsibility of producing the software by making it open source.
In A, the cost will be huge and if the programmer that wrote it leaves the company, the bugs will be difficult and costly to work out.
In situation B, even if they end up footing most of the bill for the software, they will get lots of help removing the bugs from evreryone else who load balances their IDKFA servers. If the programmer who designed it leaves the company, there are still many other programmers familiar with the code they can hire to update it.
The value of software is purely the value of what it does. Sometimes, you can sell it based on that value. Sometimes, you can't sell it, despite it's value. If it's valuable and you can't sell it, Open Source it! (duh)
And, there's that other little side benefit to participating in an OSS project. You'll have a lot of information gathered on who out there is a talented programmer you might want to recruit. No job interview is going to match how much you learn about a candidate from actually watching their work.
The reason that BSD development appears to be on a par with Linux is simply that there are a limited number of people capable of coding at the level required. Whilst Linux (probably) has more hard-core kernel coders overall, as a percentage figure above the number of people doing similiar things to BSD, it might not be such a great increase.
And then you come to some point in a system which is horrifically complicated (such as the VM system) where you probably have under 10 people on each side that understand it thoroughly.
On the other hand, practically anybody with a little bit of C knowledge and patience can whip up a nice looking GTK+ application without too many problems, so here, the larger user base of Linux shows up as more user applications are written.
Note that all this is just theorizing; I have no figures to back me up.
OSS developers do not work for nothing; an OSS project is a training and proving ground exposing young developers to large-scale collaborative development. Another reward is the accumulation of kudos -- this may be sought for its own sake or leveraged commercially, especially within organizations that follow an open-source business model (see Note 3).
This is a very perceptive, succinct write up by Gartner, and Rob got it right when he said this one would make a good executive summary.
My question is how sustainable this is. I worry just a little that OSS business model/business culture is a bubble that could burst (especially after enough IPOs and mergers etc etc). Look at Mozilla... what if Netscape programmers were suddenly reassigned to work on AOL 7 (seeing as AOL 6 is already out ;)? ATW doesn't strike me as anything less than a cold-hearted capitalist corporation bent on world domination. RH is a more encouraging example of an OSS business culture that I would expect to survive.
We can't deny that Linux has fueled a lot of the interest in OSS as a business model. If Linux ever stagnates or reaches a development plateau (gasp-shudder-perish-the-thought), and there isn't another project with it's momentum to "lead the charge", could OSS businesses fade? Or is it here to stay? (I personally feel that OSS business is more long-term profitable than closed-source, but IANAE).
If anyone has any links to research or projected growth models, I would appreciate it, particular ones with positive expectations for OSS business ;) Ethan
Now I have something to put us closer to equal footing.
I especially love this part:
I just can't wait for the next meeting to bring this up again and show these fat, balding, middle-aged, clueless management drones that they have been laughing off OSS at their own expense all this time. Maybe it'll do some good, maybe not. Just the recommendation alone that we "re-examine" the no-OSS policy will set off a flurry of activity as someone will get this action-item to report on this and most of the points that were cited in our poicy are directly debunked in the Gartner article.
Somebody is going to look even stupider than usual.