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Open Source Needs Leadership?
alessio writes: "At Webmonkey there is an article from Jay Greenspan which reports from Open Source Conference 2001, and I cannot agree with 99% of what he says. However, there is a point worth of discussion: do the Open Source/Free Software movement need a 'leadership' to better fight back new stuff from Redmond? His answer is yes, my would be no, but maybe it's not obvious."
When I hear things like this, I get really nervous:
- Who determines which development initiative is worthless? Some projects are started for the sake of starting a project, even if they duplicate the effort of another. There may still be value in this; the architecture and code is not going to be identical to other similar projects. But many projects that are similar to others are started because someone wanted to do something differently. In the current OSS model, developers are free to pursue these avenues. Sure, there is some redundancy, but it's not worthless; it's evolution.
- How would you impose any form of organization on a body that refuses to be organized in this way? I fear that any such effort will simply create another faction (Organized OSS - OOSS?
:) while the rest of the OSS community continues on its merry way.
But the point of the article was a call for unity of the OSS community under a common leadership, not a reorganization of the way things are currently working. The implied aim is to pull together and defend the OSS way of operating by presenting a unified front.The fact that there are many distros, text editors, etc. is a positive thing in my eyes. As OSS matures, certain projects/products have and will become recognized as true leaders and will gain the prominence and effort they deserve. But you never know... one of those future stars could be one of those "worthless" projects that is just a gleam in some developer's eye.
He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how. -Frederick Nietzsche
Get used to it.
People have wonderful NL processors that allow us to resolve ambiguities in words by placing context..
Listen, I'm not a particularly huge supporter of Linux, just because I've tried it before and, though I'm hardly a tech novice, I just found it too bothersome to do the things that I wanted to do. The UI was rather annoying, and over all I just found Windows 2000 to be easier for ME to use. Now, if Linux works for some people (as it obviously does), that's great, and I'm glad for it, so don't flame me or whatnot. Here's the thing... What the OSS and Free Software crowd are looking for out there is basically a revolution. You'd like to overthrow the (oppressive) powers-that-be and erect a new temple built on the ground of sharing, cooperation, and equality. Laudable goals. The problem is that no revolution has ever really been staged without a visionary that is able to guide and mould the revolution. Look at politics for your examples: Italy, Russia, France, the United States...they all required leaders who had the vision and drive to unite the factions within each nation that wanted change and tell the sides to shut the hell up about the minor things and do the major things right. That's what has to be done in order to win at anything. Businesses are the same way. You can't run a business by proxy: it just doesn't work. The most successful businesses are ones that have a leader that will go out on a limb, take a risk, but at the same time gather and consolidate his employees into a working, functioning machine. That's the only way that works. If you want further examples, look at early humans: we lived in tribes, we had a leader who was there because he was the strongest (ergo, he could tell everyone else what to do), and everyone listened to him. You know why? Because if they didn't, infighting would result, and everyone would die. Same thing with the OSS/FS community: if you really want to beat the other side, you have to have someone who can call the shots and say "listen, we all need to work on *THIS* in order to make the next step." Without that, people (especially smart ones) have too many of their own ideas to be productive...energies have to be focused, and that's what a leader does. Just my 2 cents. KGod
How could a leader lead opensource community?
If a person is working on project A because he likes it, then you cannot just tell him to work on project B. If project A is useless and redundant, then the programmer will switch to using and developing a superior product eventually anyway(w/o leadership), but otherwise he would just tell any self-called 'leader' to stop bugging him.
I may disagree with your opinion, but I will defend to death your right to speak it.
Need is the OSS leader. Where there is Need, someone writes a program. I think this Need guy is a great leader.
And how exactly am I supposed to do this? The problem with usability is that testing is difficult (and/or expensive). With a piece of "technical" code, you can look which is more stable, which has a better architecture, which runs faster, etc. With usability, such simple tests are not possible, and there are often good arguments for more than one design.
Just one example, menubars: Should each window have its own, or should they be a global menubar on the screen's top edge? There are valid arguments for both possibilities. The choice of open source projects in those cases is far too often to leave the choice to the user. This might be the right decision in some cases, but in many cases, I think it is not. Effectively, it means giving the job of the interface designer to the user.
There are also problems with convincing the maintainers that there actually is a problem. Too many developers simply don't realize that their software has a bad usability.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
Great post!
I think that we don't need a Leader, but more of a humongous to-do list, and try to convince the developers to be a bit more focussed on what needs to be done, instead of what *can* be done. IMHO it's, just like you say, a complete waste of energy to develope yet another tool (editor, IDE, debugger, MP3 player, CD-player, shell, etc). Choice is good, too much choice is spilled energy!
Didn't the president of Commodore once remark that the Amiga cultists didn't do them any favors?
I think open source software, and particularly Linux, is in the same situation. Because so many people who publicly support it rant and rave and go on about Microsoft conspiracies, it ends up marginalized. People look at that and think, "wow, that OS is written by a bunch of nutjobs."
Open source programmers REALLY needs to get laid more often.
But thats going to be kind of hard since women require their men to earn money (yes, thats right. Whatever people say this is a FACT) and thats hard when you give everything away.
We have many times more developers than Microsoft
Yes, but we most of us are not nearly as co-ordinated and motivated (read: well-payed) as the Microsoft guys.And Microsoft is not the 'Closed Source Movement', it's the movement's leader.There is a huge number of closed-source companies following, so it's not as simple as you say it is.
The OS(Open Source) movement desperately needs a leader if it wants to succeed as a major movement. But, as always, leaders tend to slowly become evil dictators. Don't fool yourselves that the OSS is a society of do-gooders.Nuh-uh. It's leader (be it RedHat or any other OS company you can think of) is just as vulnerable to evil manipulating actions as Microsoft itself(though IMHO there are no evil companies, just clumsy and greedy ones).
There is no such thing as 'world peace'.
Two groups WASTING money, um - wasting?
Theo apparently is a whinny baby, so is RMS, and Gates, and McEtc... whats your point?
Not good for Free software when the big project leaders are assholes. It's not good for any product when the project leaders are assholes, It's also not to good when programmers are assholes, which most are.
fragmentation is bad, and that would be something like BSD and SysV, there is no fragmentation with Linux, the kernel is the same for all.
How about fixing broken things? and I supose you have?
MS builds appliations in highly resuable pieces. And you know because you have access to source code from MS that displays the reuse of code peices? It would seem you've never taken part in a big software project using MS software and dev tools.
Do we need leadership?
Like we NEED cell phones, and Tofu.
To my mind, the more important leaders of the OS/Free movement are the leaders of headline projects. Linus Torvalds is the most obvious, but people like Miguel de Icaza are also important. It's these guys who actually provide a focus and a vision for the abundant supply of open source labour that would otherwise go to waste. They provide actual goals and actual directions for the community to follow, which results in getting something done. The philosophers like Stallman are important (and I realize they've contributed significantly on the practical side), but the ultimate goal of OSS is to produce software that people like and use, not write treatises. That's how we'll achieve Total World Domination.
To those who wish the community to go in a certain direction I would say: do what Torvalds and ESR (and the Mono guys) did (albeit somewhat unintentionally in Torvalds' case). Create the beginnings of a project that embodies your ideas and put it up for your peers to assess and maybe contribute to. And be prepared to take on the administrative duties (filtering, reviewing and applying patches mainly) that go with keeping the project going. It doesn't matter if it sucks or not, that's for others to decide. If it sucks, no one will contribute and the project will go nowhere, no harm done.
This is kind of like a capitalism vs centrally planned debate.
From a command sense of view, Open Source is more like extreme capitalism; there is no central planning, & each little niche can be filled at a fast pace. A "big picture" can't be maintained when nobody, or no single movement is in charge.
Closed Source is more like central planning; there is a controller & command system, so larger projects and a real sense of direction in a project & overall strategy can be achieved, at the cost of being able to fill every little niche.
What is needed is a balance in 'governence' over the Open Source process. Laissez-faire Open Source fails to produce any big picture - which means the likes of Microsoft's command system can eventually flank Open Source by simply being able to manage something Open Source cannot - a plan, a direction, & a strategy.
This isn't a "USSR Vs The West(TM)" debate. Undemocratic central-planning can win on this.
Absolutely.
Communism, Marxism and to a lesser extent Socialism don't work in the political world, so why do we expect the same philosophy to produce high-quality OSS?
Good software requires motivation, either monetary or personal. People don't do good work without it. OSS based companies are probably the best way to accomplish this. Employees in traditional companies convincing management of the benefits of using and supporting OSS would go a long way as well.
Personally, I would like to spend time improving OSS software, but my non-working hours are too valuable to be spent doing work for free,
Looks like this guy just doesn't get it.
1: Free software (& 'open source') is not about killing Microsoft. Microsoft is bent on screwing the user over for as much cash as they can take. Free software is about freeing the user from that domination, and giving the user control of their own software destiny.
2: Leader? We don't need to steenking leader! This is a grassroots movement in what is probably the most egalitarian forum ever devised. If you can write good code, people respect that. What's a leader going to do? Enforce project timelines? Talk to the press? We've already got lots of people doing that e.g.: RMS & ESR.
3: Left to themselves, the people writing the code will go through their own darwinian selection process. Some projects will gain at the expense of others, some will merge, some will die, some will co-exist. This process takes time, (sometimes _too_long_), but so what? If you want something to move faster, contribute to it! With so many good coders contributing to the community, the richness and quality of Free Software accretes over time. At some point, the sheer mass of high-quality free software will overwhelm the ability of proprietary software to compete. This is already starting to happen with Linux vs. proprietary Unix, and will likely happen in other areas in the next few years.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
BTW, KDE doesn't just run on Linux. AFAIK Gnome is Linux-only.
Don't look at this as a problem, but look at this as an opportunity to make a name for yourself. If you know of some programs you think are hard to use, fix them!
BTW, I have been paid to code for over 23 years and I find most of the Unix/OSS tools much easier to use for serious development. Maybe these tools are harder to learn at first, but are much more powerful once you know how to use them.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Sniff, that smells like Communism boy. Anyway, I hear you've seen the light and started developing for Windows.
Take a look at his premature eulogy for Slashdot. Take what he says with a pinch of salt, folks.
OK, I'll take a look.
"The camaraderie and high spirits will soon be replaced by the same rancor and factiousness that permeates the rest of the capitalist world."
Hang on, are you saying Jay was wrong with this prediction??
You are just /so/ right. I don't have 22 years of experience (22 comes close to my age), but I too noticed that the UI still is what really holds most OS projects back from broader acceptance.
I'm really disappointed with KDE2, it is full of compromises due to the lack of leadership. They didn't even decide wether to put the menu bar on top of the screen or inside the window, they just made it an option! Making such essential decisions an option is a bad mistake. To me it really seems like they could not decide wether to make a true SDI or a true MDI environment, thus running into serious problems.
Take a look at KWord for Example: For every document instance, you get a new window with lots of space-wasting buttons on the top. This does not happen with true MDI like in Word 97 for Windows nor with true SDI like in Word for Macintosh.
So, I will agree that Mozilla is still in its alpha/beta stages, but I'm sorry, more than half the Internet runs off Apache web servers, that sounds pretty complete to me, so how can it be considered any more unfinished than Microsoft's IIS? Is it because they don't use version numbers to try and make it sound liek their product is more mature? Gah, and databases? I'm sorry, what about PostgreSQL, mySQL, etc? I think the author of this article was just a bit uninformed. :P
What is a true leader? He is one who commands respect and admiration from his followers. He is one who can exploit the talents of his followers to the full extreme. Who is better to do this, especially for the Open Source community, than Pee-Wee Herman himself, Paul Reubens? Besides being a brilliant character actor and talented writer, Paul Reubens is a proclaimed open source developer, familiar with almost every major language out there today. His role in the development of X-Windows is legendary, and to this day, I love seeing the "I know you crashed but what am I?" error message. Paul Reubens was also behind many of the popular linux games. Mr T's Breakfast Adventure is loved by geek children everywhere, and Don't Upset Chairy was a cult hit. What fun times we had when we all typed the secret word of the day, in all caps, with a gratuitous amount of exlimation points. Paul Reubens is also responsible for making Linux a household word, by sneaking refernces to it in his many hit films. Remember the convict that Pee-Wee hitched a ride with in Pee-Wee's Big Aventure? How we laughed at the sly references to him being incarcerated for 1337 hax0ring. And Paul Reubens bisexual hairdresser in Blow called Johnny Dep "even cuter than Tux." VOTE PAUL REU 4 PREZ
Well ESR maintains fetchmail, while RMS only (co-)wrote emacs, gcc, binutils, make, ...
Oh, wait a minute...
well how did this whole open source movement get this far? Seems to me OS has done fairly well for itself with a lesser degree of distributed leadership. Just because it seems like the correct "traditional" route to go (with leadership) doesn't mean that it's the right thing for OS, or how things will work in the future. Especially since Linux has already proven that OS (the perposterous rule breaker itself) CAN work, and DOES work with a lack of leadership. I think what most OS projects really need is an arbitrator. Instead of having programmers bicker about doing this or that, there needs to be someone who says we'll do it this way, and if it sucks we'll do it the other way.
Ahh... "organizations" (e.g. Microsoft, IBM, etc) derive from the word "organize". Despite how much you may hate Microsoft and Adobe, they have something that is really fundamental to growth, organization.
I have found in my own "big business" experience that not everything that goes on at the big business level is "right" or "the best way of doing things" but things still get done. What any business needs is a management chain that understands the best ways AND does them. Some companies have this, some don't, and some fall in the middle.
The problem with OSS has been stated, waring distros, KDE vs GNOME, 10+ window managers, 10+ distros, 10+ console text editors, 3 browsers, etc etc etc... the list can go on forever. If OSS was made into an organizational unit, these things would be minimized (or maybe 2-3 organizational units). For instance, why do we need 10 text editors? We don't... we have "preferences" but I think newbies "prefer" pico because it's easy to use (okay dont argue that XYZ is easier than pico, it's not the point).
In an organizational unit, a group of people would sit down and evaluate (to the best of their abilities) how one solution outperforms another solution. They'd run performance tests, user tests, and more importantly how easy it is to maintain a particular set of code. Once they've added everything together, they'd choose a single text editor, linux distro, etc etc.
Where, right now, let's say there are 10 text editors, each has a group of 3 people working on it. If we were to evaluate and eliminate the worthless projects (as an organization would do) we can better pool our resources together so we can have 2 maybe 3 text editors, each with 10 to 15 people working on them. Doing this increasing the time and manpower each project has and increases the power, flexibility, and usefulness of the application.
Someone mentioned the *BSD distros, there being too many of them, well there are only really 3 major ones, but then the comment was made about Theo. I don't really know Theo and I haven't spoken to him, but I don't think many of you have either. Theo had disputes with people, which he felt were strong enough to leave a particular project and start OpenBSD. This has been done all over the Linux community as well on multiple projects, so to say Theo is the only one who "can't get along" is rediculous.
Right now, every Linux project is like a bunch of a warring factions. This is a form of anarchy, and it has proven through history that anarchies do not do well in the bigger scheme of things.
The linux community, as a whole, needs some kind of organization.. and I don't mean letting Linus and Cox run the show. We need people who are business-oriented and not technical to run the organization. This way decisions can be made to better utilize the resources of the Linux community.
No. Having Richard Stallman speak for us is like having Charlton Heston speak for the National Rifle Association. We need to be taken seriously, because right now mainstream society considers us to be a bunch of misguided idealists at best, and a crew of destructive lunatics at worst. We need leaders capable of stating our case rationally, without appeals to ideals and morals that do not exist in society at large. While Mr. Stallman has done a great deal for Open Source through FSF and the GNU project, his positions are too strident for mainstream society to accept. I'd suggest that (if they are willing) Ken Thompson, Linus Torvalds, Matthias Ettrich, and Miguel di Icaza (sp?) represent us. As the driving forces behind Unix, Linux, KDE, and GNOME; the business world already knows of these people and what they are capable of.
******
"What makes you think I care about your opinions?"
Isn't it already taken for granted that the "open source" design methodology is not an instant panacea, but still needs rules, goals, milestones, leadership, etc.? One only need observe that most of the successful open source projects have rather anti-"free for all" leadership - the Linux kernel passes through the judgement of one or two human beings, Apache foundation is pretty strict, the BSD structures are rather hierarchical and dense near the top, and just do a cursory search on SourceForge to find tens (probably hundreds?) of projects who are at the stage: "planning to think about sometime writing down an opinion on how to clone something for which there are already a gazillion clones". It's a bazaar in a cathedral man - a bazedral!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
We need Somebody of Stature (Yes, Linus would be perfect, but he's smart enough to duck the headache) to step up to bat and Set Forth The Plan. We need a Sanctioned List of What Linux Needs Today. Make it a list of tasks, broken up into the smallest reasonable size, tasks that one programmer or a small clan of programmers could tackle inside a reasonably specific timeframe.
Now, what incentive could we offer programmers to work on the Official Projects instead of their own?
We offer them Karma of course. Call it whatever you want, brownie points, geek cred, whatever. We need to come to an understanding inside the programming community that "open source karma" will be taken into consideration at job interviews.
In a community of fiercely competitive geeks who want to quantify everything, we give them a perfect way to do it. Make it the goal of every CS student to have 100 OSK (open source karma) points before they graduate. Let those older coders know that if they want to switch from COBOL to O'Caml in the job market, then 50 OSK points granted in the O'Caml category will get them taken seriously in a job interview.
Is this a perfect plan? Hell, no. I'm not even sure I like it. Would I expect bitching somewhere down the line? Yes, and in copious amounts.
But I do think this might at least help herd the cats in the same general direction.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
But while you're looking at places like FreshMeat.net, you might also notice that many of these endeavours reflect the wide variety personalities and desires that comprise the Open Source movement. In other words, in many ways, many Open Source softwares are the unique artistic expression of the individuals behind them. Instead of stroking paint and palette, we blast bits and bytes. And instead of museums and art stores, we the internet and individual computers as our showplace.
My fear is that bringing Open Source under a centralized effort _MAY_ have as chilling effect as Communism did on the arts in the former Soviet Union.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Your list is hardly a list of LEADERS. A list of oppertunists, yes. Leaders, no.
RMS comes the closest. He stays on target when he talks. Yet, the FSF had their spokesperson whine that *RMS was not invited to the Open Source conference*, yet RMS is the 1st to say "GNU/GPL is not Open Source". (if you are not Open Source, tell everyone that, THEN don:t get invited to an Open Source conference, your message is being heard and understood)
ESR spends his time promoting GNU/Linux, but when asked, he says "BSD deserves more press than it gets". Yet, ESR will not lift a finger to get BSD more press. But, hey, free trips to speak on GNU/Linux, why mess that up with being inclusive rather than exclusive eh?
Bruce Perens has a web page where he talks about how he is all for Open Source. Yet, when you read his works, all he does is talk about the GPL. In fact, he admits that he is "linux advocate". Again, so much for being inclusive.
Miguel de Icaza referes to the GNOME project and the MONO efforts as "Linux software". Yet, the main GNOME web page point out that it is Open Source, and runs on MANY platforms.....the software is not "Linux Software".
OSDN. It is not about Open Source as it is about Linux. Same goes for the Open Source development Lab (Yea, the one funded by Red Hat) Call it the Linux lab or the Lnux development network if you are unwilling to be inclusive.
Tim O`Reilly is a better leader for Open Source than the others. Mr. O`Reilly says Linux when he manes Linux, and when he says Open Source, he includes BSD/Artistic/X licensed software.
Unlike the "other" "leaders" who wrap themselfs up in a cape of "open source leader" because it gives them a soapbox to preach from. Or, puts some money in their pocket.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
"People like ESR, RMS, Perens, O'Reilly "
:)
Hehe, Yeah, extreme left-wing people like this really helps open source
Edit
Notepad
Wordpad
Word
and some olders ones
Write
Works Wordprocessor
It's amazing how many people will tell me spell-checker wasn't installed on their Word only to find they are running Wordpad
That said, he has a few good points he makes regarding lack of consolidated leadership. Interestingly, OpenSOurce is about distributied activities - namely, distributed development. What we're finding here is that regardless of how well distributed development may work, distributed leadership doesn't work. As much as it pains me to say this, the OSS comunity needs to adopt a more corporate style hirarchical leadership model, sith some accountability built in. It fas fascinatinf to me that Microsoft was the consolidating force inthe OSS comunity for those first few months after Mundie's initial speech in which he bashed the GPL and made the initial announcement of the Microsoft PR initiative known as Shared Source. Imediately after this, there was a consolidated, well reasoned and organized response. Since then though, things have deteriorated substancially.
OSS likes to organize itself into projects - perhaps we need the OSS Political Action Comittee Project, who's mission it is to raise awareness andprovide a unified political direction for member software projects.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Some posters are suggesting we need something closer to a disciplined corporate structure. All the corporate structure in the world is not going to help without a clear sense of what will make the end users life better. OpenSource needs to change its focus from pleasing the coder to pleasing the end user. That type of change may not be as drastic as you think. Linux, I believe, was made by people who wanted the respect of their peers. The project was an operating system. The programmer was the customer. Now our customers are ordinary people. That doesn't make their respect less worth earning. What we do need to do is talk too ordinary people. We need to convince them we are here to take the thorn from the paw. Listen to people. We have many more ears then MS. Then make software that makes peoples lives better.
I think along with leadership, we need restraint and critical thinking. It's a lot more exciting to start your own massive infrastructure project than to work with someone else, but there are only so many available smart-person hours around. I think the chasing tail lights assessment of OS was correct to some extent. Spend some time every day thinking about ways to change this. It's hard but there are a lot of us.
You need RMS as your leader. We promise to respect his authoriatah. Hehehehehee.
The last thing OS needs is leadership - plenty of that to go around, and really why should any of us listen to any particular leader? That's the way companies work and it doesn't make any sense to adopt that model.
What OS needs is strategy - some group to say "I believe strongly in a goal of X. If we has OS projects A, B, C, and D we could achieve that goal - here are a list of projects currently closest in line with these goals, we plead with those in the community to take up the remaining tasks."
Thus strategic needs would thus be met through a structure that mirrors the way OS projects themselves work - there could be any number of strategic groups dedicated to different goals, each painting a picture of how a specific set of applications can help move everyone forward. These groups could also make enhancement requests for projects they see as fitting the mission in order to help unify sets of applications to some degree.
This idea is only half thought out and obviously has some issues but I think overall it's pretty sound and would give rise to a number of all OS based business "solutions" composed of many apps.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
BTW, KDE doesn't just run on Linux. AFAIK Gnome is Linux-only.
Since Sun and HP are both adopting Gnome as their standard desktops I think it's reasonable to assume that Gnome doesn't only run on Linux. But just to be clear about it, no Gnome doesn't only run on Linux.
HTH
it is not all about economics.
Consider for a moment:
A) How many microsoft wage-slaves are truly happy doing their programming?
B) How many volunteer OSS coders are truly happy doing their programming?
anyone like to hazard a guess which number would be larger... place bets NOW!!!
I'll pass on the dead tree nailing, but thanks for mentioning it.
I'll take your last suggestion under advisement, but deadly weapons will help me vanquish any of our enemies.
Open Source needs detail-oriented, small-time, painstaking *work*. Not vision, not tirades against the Evil Empire of Redmond, not manifestos. It needs a lot of people to sit down and clean things up. Small things, things that collectively annoy the user, but individually are too boring for an OSS developer to bother with.
That's how good software, how good *anything* gets done. The OSS way however, has been that for something to be refined, polished, it has to "scratch an itch", it has to annoy someone enough *and* have that someone be skilled or talented enough to go fix it him/herself.
How do you get people to work on minute trivial things that they normally donot care about? the one time-tested way is, well, to *pay* them to do it. Where do you get the money? well, you will probably need a corporate structure that will fund these developers and that will be able to stand on its own two feet.
In other words you need companies, companies like Active State, theKompany, Digital Creations (now Zope) and a few (very few) others. You need to let companies sell OSS without bitching all the time that they are ruining your free lunch. You need to let companies have pay-to-play versions that are ahead of the OSS one so that they can financially support development, QA and documentation. You need to have companies have non-GPL licenses on their products without going Homeini on them.
Preferrably all of the above do not involve flammage and mail-bombing and invocations of Rights and Freedom. Writing software is not Speech, it is *not* equivalent to expressing one's opinion on common matters ("politics", people call them). Writing software is hard, painful and mostly boring work, engineering work. It needs good design, a painstaking devotion to quality and most of all someone to be paying that budget.
And if your premise is true, then why haven't *BSD taken over the world?
Think before you speak, grasshoppah.
P.S.: root@localhost is my email address. See that you don't make that mistake again. >=])
More than Leadership ,what it needs is a good Marketing Department...
Feel free to concat me with all your troubles...
you should have married a lawyer... then it doesn't matter
A feature that would be cool on a site like sourceforge is an organization that could channel aspiring developers to the right project.
For instance: Developer A is thinking of developing a text editor, just for the experience. He posts his request along with his skill list on sourceforge. At the other end, someone (a volunteer?), goes through his request, or resumé if you wish, and helps him join the right project group. A simple thing as this one could probably get rid of many duplicate projects, and make it easier for newbies to join the OSS movement.
Maybe I am just being naive, but I really think there is a lot that could be done for OSS in terms of virtual organization that could really make a difference.
Even if the thought of scaling back all work on a product except the pure programming bit is tempting to any techie, it doesn't really work for very complex projects, with a complex user base. If you want to make a niche product like Doom then that's ok, because every user will play doom more or less the same way. But if you are going to build a truly competitive OS, then you need to think hard about all the different types of customers, who they are, what they know, and what they want.
Will code a sig generator for food
I will be happy to act as your leader.
Bow down before me and worship.
Go forth and develop software that is good and plentiful.
Send me donations.
Live long and prosper.
Be nice to each other.
Ummm, how much worship time do you need, and will you accept AOL CDs as offerings/donations??
And didn't someone get nailed to a dead tree for inciting people to be nice to each other??
Would you consider "abolition of all armies and deadly weapons" as an addition to your supreme commandments?? Please???
Unfortunately, (as can be seen here) only very few stretches of DNA are known for penguins!
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Unfortunately power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It would be nice to have someone who guided the open source movement, however it is like the way the US government is heading. People want to believe in a benevolent dictator but there is no such thing. The first one may very well put everything on a track that is good for everybody, after that, forget it. There would be no difference between that position and Bill Gates. Yes, market share is important, but no it's not the end all and be all of software. After it becomes self-sustaining the focus should be on 'where do we go now?' and that's where most leaders screw up.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
If the open source movement had some definite leadership and organazation, there would be no reason for anyone to use commercial software again.
Ita it, Jakubo
Maybe what we need, instead of a leader, is a PR department...
--RJ
I think the Linux community needs a small group of people who espouse the OS in a positive manner without having to resorting to too-fashionable Microsoft bashing.
People like Richard Stallman are unfortunately viewed as too vociferous and radical and ends up turning off way too many IT managers along the way. That IMHO is why some folks in the anti-Microsoft crowd (namely Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy) are not viewed in a positive light at times.
an enema.
Isn't the whole aim of the Open Source movement to create 'Software that doesn't suck', maintain a community atmosphere for developers, help people out, and just have fun in general? I don't see what 'fighting back stuff from Redmond' has to do with the issue because open software is about choices, not trying to supress another product from market success.
All in all, I think that Open Source is doing it's job just fine without centralized leadership, which is creating high quality software and keeping it's devlopers busy and happy.
We did not get to the place we are with a leader. What we need to do, is continue to write, debug, improve and release code under the fearsome GPL. If anything, faster than before.
Like it or not, a lot of that animus serves the world quite well by fueling a passion for open source.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
What you people really need is to change the stereotypical image that most IT departments have of the Linux community.
Stop acting like children. Stop crying about everything Microsoft does (Hell even Sun has SOME restraint when it comes to that).
The Operating System market is NOT Cuba and Linus/RMS is NOT Fidel Castro. Until you learn the simple fact that you must show respect towards your competitors in order to be respected, you guys will always just be Fringe Fanatics.
Gam
"Flame at Will"
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
If we need anything, it is not pundits but some form of consortium (like the W3C) that does not manage so much as protect and encourage Open Source development. Perhaps 'recommendations' rather than edicts should be passed along. However, this brings up the issue of just who the hell is in a position to make up this consortium and how it will be supported by a community that thrives on grants, donations and the simple generosity of its constituents as it is. It's a bigger picture than just control vs. no control. The latter is simple, but the former brings up a new subset of issues to be hashed out. Again... hashed out by whom??? Etc...
Root DOWN
grep what -i sed?
What M$ has done is to make the UI universal/consistent across most, if not all, applications. And they are integrated too. I can launch Excel, Word, and most of M$ application just within IE, and the menu bars with respect to the applications get loaded into IE itself, transparently. Everything works within IE. Lotus Smartsuite and Corel WordPerfect Office just can't match it, even though they are, IMHO, far superior technically than MS Office. It is a chore to format a huge document in Word than in WordPerfect.
I support the Open Source movement, but I am only a casual Linux user and not up-to-date with the latest developments of KDE or GNOME.. but can KDE or GNOME do something like what MS has done?
The OS(Open Source) movement desperately needs a leader if it wants to succeed as a major movement. But, as always, leaders tend to slowly become evil dictators.
That's probably true and I'm sure it would happen to an extent, but isn't there something to be said for competition benefiting the consumer? The OS(Open Source) movement has resulted in something that Microsoft can't ignore. However, it seems that it needs a leader to move it to the next level. Even if that leader became somewhat of an evil dictator, maybe that next level would be enough competition to have a good effect on Microsoft. The evilness of the dictator could be buffered by implementing a community process similar to Sun's Java Community Process.
We are Borg
Resistance Is Futile
Prepare To Be Assimilated
[had to get that in before someone else does]
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
While Bill Gates may be the person that many of us love to hate, he is the icon of Microsoft, and puts a human face on an otherwise impersonal corporation. He just looks unassuming, and mild mannered... kind of a "geek next door" look.
If someone in the open source community were to step forward to become the poster boy and PR representative to counter the FUD that Gates distributes to the media, it would probably help immensely.
Of course, with a 20 in charisma, he's going to be rather hard to defeat.
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
The fanatics however, who think politics instead of just sourcecode, need a leader, to 'fight' (haha, it's sourcecode, not a war) whatever they declare an enemy.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Yes, Open Source DOES need leadership.
....And it needs is FAST !!!
If you take what is probably typical of what is used by Open Source advocates - A Linux / PC platform, with an X front end and a collection of apps along the lines of web browsers, CD players, word processor etc etc, the whole thing is turning into an uncoordinated mess !
I don't want to knock anyone here, but if you take the Linux kernel for example, it's very quickly turning into a huge bloat. There is no 'standard' way of doing anything. Software installation is not even standard. OK, we have RPM, but it's certainly not universal, and even if it was, does it do a good enough job anyway ? Presumably not, otherwise everyone would use it. We have a multitude of APIs that all do the same thing.
Hands up everyone who has to have two or three graphics (or something else) libraries installed to make everything work ! Or three or four different versions of the C runtime libraries ! It's crap ! Pure and simple.
Someone needs to grab this mess by the horns and do something about it before it's too late.
I don't think even one of the collection of web browsers that are kicking about for Linux is what I would call 'good'. Some of them are 'ok', but good ? 100% reliable ? 20% reliable would be a start !!!! Some of them are downright shite !
And that's another problem. Instead of having a hundred versions of an application (whether it be a browser, CD player, or just a simple text editor) that are either half cooked, buggy, or just excruciatingly awkward to use, why can't we just have one or two ? Combine and co-ordinate all this effort to make something that actually works ?
There are the political problems too - GNOME v KDE is a prime example. I'm not going to get into which one is 'better', but really... Why, for goodness sake ??? Not one of these platforms is 100% what I (and I very much suspect anyone else) want from an windowing interface. GNOME is going the same way as the Linux kernel - things keep getting bolted onto it to plug holes that really shouldn't be there in the first place.
Writing applications for such a platform is no joke either ! Which desktop should I write for ? Which of the dozens of graphical APIs (that all do essentially the same thing !!!) should I use ? It's an impossible situation, and it's only going to get much much worse.
As a result of all this, there is no 'standard'. It is simply not possible to go from one Linux machine to another and be right at home because the new machine will have a different editor, it might not even be running the same desktop !!!!
How can anyone possibly expect to gain universal acceptance for such a mess ? It may be fine for the tech-heads among us, but for 'normal' people who have better things to do with their time than compile the latest Linux kernel, it's a no-go area.
If you compare this with Windows (without getting all excited and silly about it), what do we have ? I mean, apart from a bloated, slow and buggy system ? We have standard text editors, a standard word processor, a web browser that actually works (most of the time), standard development tools (bliss !!!!) , etc etc etc......
OK, I'm not forgetting that we have these standard Windows tools because MS has steam rolled over all the competition. I know that ! But (and here's the important point), it does mean you can go from one Windows box to another and you can be immediately at home. You know where everything is. You know how to use the applications.
This is why Windows has succeeded - people like it because (despite everything) it's a hell of a lot easier to use than the competition.
At the moment, this is just a pipe dream for Linux, and I rather suspect always will be.
All you people are your ideas of leadership.
Leadership is about vision. It's about goals. It's about dreams. It's not about management. It's not about selling out. It's not about stifling innovation.
Leadership is about creating purpose. It's about defining a path. It's about deciding what we're REALLY trying to achieve.
So, in a sense, Open Source already DOES have leadership. It has leadership in each and EVERY one of the open-source projects that are going on right now. It has leadership in each and every one of the contributors to those projects.
NOW, that being said, the real question is whether we need more leadership in the fight against closed-source software? And in that case, maybe we do. But that's a question we have to ask ourselves. Do we want to devote more energy and time to fighting corporations like Microsoft. If we do, then we need more leadership. And we need it now.
Bringing more leadership to the table does NOT mean giving up freedom. It means focussing energies and defining goals. Everyone still has the freedom to do whatever they want. But if they have the same visions and goals as the leadership does, then they will be better off, because there will be more focus and definition to the tasks at hand.
One more post on the journey to negative Karma history!
More mod points to you ! Bang on, on the UI issue.
But on an OT note, i wonder what Open source needs leadership for ? More people to use it ? More money to be made out of it? Kill Microsoft ?
From what i've read, this movement is about sharing your work, without restrictions..In my opinion, no one person is/should be *responsible* for an Open-Source product,unless the person happens to be the sole developer.
As for the PR work, yes there needs to be a few spokespersons, which we already have.
All the same, a good product would hardly need an advertisement - Proof is Apache,Linux,and number of BSD installations.
The FSF porpose is to clone Unix. I don't think they are Open Source Leaders, since that is not what they aim to do or be. Oh, and RMS is Stalin.
Open Source needs several things if it is going to become a MAJOR influence on the programming world.
First, the "unsexy" work needs to get done. The problem is, people who are not getting payed can not be forced to do the "boring" work. An easy solution for this problem would be finding a way to give people who work on certain listed projects credit for their work. Maybe a website with a list of boring but neccessary projects, anyone who submits code for those projects will have their name listed next to their contribution, a donations page would also be a good idea.
Open Source also needs one BIG cross-platform application that EVERYONE will have to use, something absolutely huge. This will draw attention to the Open Source movement, a lot of attention.
Finally, Open Source needs to take a page from the "Book of Proven Corporate Tactics" and start spewing (like the exorcist chick) large amounts of propaganda. If Joe sixpack can be scared into looking into Open Source projects by horror stories of proprietary software then thats what we need. A news webpage of some type that is linked to by several major sites and a bunch of volunteer "scare" reporters should suffice.
Oh yeah, one last thing. Open Source NEEDS CODE. (note period)
"
It took me towo pages to find that OS did not stand for Operating Sytem (as it usually does) but for Open Source.
It would be nice if articles that describe Operating Systems and Open Source at the same time find it usefull to be a bit more clear about it.
In all other sciences it is custom to explain abbreviations in the text at least once.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
There is no reason why we cannot pursue all the options you have listed. We have many times more developers than Microsoft. Not all options will be correct, of course, but one of them likely will be, and it will succeed.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Kill him, mod him down, GPL him.
Ignore his heretical(although well thought out and reasoned) arguments.
Be different from the rest by being just like every other fat manchild living in their parent's houses.
It's in the nature of the open source movement that there's no-one who can actually appoint leaders. But don't we already have de facto leaders? People like ESR, RMS, Perens, O'Reilly etc. who speak up for open source when there is some controversy? In fact, Jay Greenspan seems to acknowledge this in his article.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
But maybe the darts are velcro!!!!!
A leader is a figure head for a community. You can 't put the entire open source community into a room with all the other citizens of the united states and sign bills and pass laws everyone can agree on. No, you need one, or a few, people to represent the community. We need a leader to talk to politicians, senators, etc. Other leaders who need to be convinced of our ideas.
Yes I did say the 'P' word, politics. Most of the people in this world can't understand technology, and so that's why we need politics, to convince all the techno-illiterate that technology is really a good thing. Do you really want to convince your average human being about your standpoint on technology? Read this first.
The OpenSource community needs an intermediary to water down its views of technology so that the average person can understand it. There's more stupid people in the world than techno-literate people.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
With abusive leaders also comes the cronyism and worse ... the bureaucrats that can take a fast moving project and/or movement and grind it down to a painful crawl.
I mean are there that many hills we have to charge up, is someone throwing the ball, is the system that broke that we need to attempt fix it with a leader ?
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
in my experience, Open Source apps are usually more intuitive and more stable than the professional ones I've seen. Lotus Notes in particular takes the booby prize as the least intuitive app with the most horribe UI I've ever run across.
That being said, I do have to wonder why Lokisoft's dialogs are the exact reverse of everyone else's in terms of button placement. They always put cancel on the left. What's up with that? I've bitched at them about it several times (I forgot to corner Draeker and ask him about it at the last CLIQ.) I've never got a response with an explanation, though.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You need leaders if you want to lead the market...
I think the issue of leadership that rises with open source project is often the lack of focus. People code what they feel is missing, or what they feel like coding. This means the devellopement follow a more organic and darwinist path, not a strategic one.
I don't think that the organic way is worse than the strategic way. While things might be less focuses, they also are not so easily distracted by fads. Sure people will add new skins and UI gimicks to programs, but those who believe their software should do this or that will simply not change ways because this or that is the fad.
I would say that the main issue nowadays with open source is simply political. Most people I know that program something open source do it because they feel it is missing, or they want to fiddle with the code or notion, or want a variant of this or that, or a doing research in universities. They have only a vague political vision - they certainly don't do it to overthrow microsoft - it might be a nice side effect, but it's not the main motivation - they do things for themselves.
But of course this does not fit with the dominant capitalism credo. And this psychology is not liked by the media: can't do headlines with people doing things in their corner because they feel like it. Real geeks don't go to discuss with the media, they code in the basement...
What happens is simply the corporations noticing that open source does not behave they way a corporation does, big surprise. So of course they think that if open-sources wants to take strategic positions in the market it should have strategic leadership...
Of course this premise is broken, because open-source is a good approach do build sturdy systems which might not make economical sense (at least for MS), most killer apps where first closed source. Eventually, an open-source contender came, but generally the original app was closed source. I don't think this will change tomorow, but then again I don't think this is tragical.
It's easy to convince people to code to get their PC and their hardware do this or that - to support a card, or to crash less, or to build a clone of this cool game, or to have a window manager like this system. It's another game to convince them to build a framework whose goal is not so clear...
Warning: Rant: The biggest problem with open source is user interface. I see plenty of programmers involved, but few UI experts, let alone serious usability testing. Until this happens, I'm sorry, but open source doesn't have a chance. Done mark me as a "traitor". I'm a big fan of the open source movement, but I'm also a programmer with 22 years in the field. The fact that most open source software is difficult for me to use is proof enough. Sorry, but that's the cold hard facts.
Hey, what an idea!
Yeah we need someone like RMS to lead something like FSF...
Oh wait..
MS has 48,000 employees, and carries a product line of over 1,200 products. 48k may seem big, but really, its not a lot. Half of those are active engineers.
The other half are lawyers.
This space left intentionally blank.
Nice troll.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Euuh, I don't want to ruin a good article, but the
"leadership" at Microsoft works because the leader
controls the pay check.
How do you enforce leadership on volunteers? Or even a group of companies that are practically independant of eachother?
Aside from the debate on leaders I don't see why there is this great need to sell the Open Source Image to users. The only situation I can think of which closely relates to this push towards enlightening the masses is the vaporware of companies such as Microsoft. It is as if the open source movement is trying to sell the best, most user friendly OS without it existing yet. Except, of course, in our case we don't have the excuse for our behavior as needing to make a profit.
I am completely content letting the Open Source movement continue as a force creating good software. I prefer when projects take their time, not making outrageous claims about the stability and usability of their software, only to have it blow up in a new users face. I prefer the atmosphere surrounding the development and releasing of AbiWord as opposed to something like Evolution (which may one day be a great program)
Regardless of what some companies may try and do with their hardware, software, licenses, and whatever to control the market, open source computer programmers will still have their computers and still enjoy programming for the sake of making stable and sometimes even user friendly software. As for me this is enough and maybe someday it will even be enough for my mom or anyone else who is still stuck using Windows.
Don't try to force Open Source software onto the rest of the world unless it is ready. Install linux on a server at work, maybe even make a linux web console for you family; but don't expect to convert the world right now, with or without great leaders.
to get laid more often.
Besides, what is peoples obsessions with writing dull essays and "papers" about the topic du jour. Write some bloody code, instead of feeding the techie webs insatiable appetite for content, usually (as in this case) the same six or seven ideas endlessly rehashed.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Open source doesnt need a leader. We already have a leader. OURSELVES. Open source lets ANY one of us become a leader, if, by ability and personality, we are capable of it. Why appoint anyone? The fluid leadership status of various projects gives those projects a far greater dynamic than a project where you are forced to work under someone, regardless of their suitability.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.
Running Gnome on NetBSD SPARC here.
You don't seriously want everything in the OSS community to be made by Microsoft's standards do you?? All of those products, many of which are very successful, with a fairly small number of employees. They're successful because they're pushed on by a monopoly. There is no other way that programs so bug ridden and void of security are going to be successful.
"We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal."
If Open Source software really wishes to compete in the marketplace with software from commercial sources then OSS needs to become commercialized. What does this mean? Does OSS have to sell out?
Well, it does mean that OSS has to begin advertising. I am not saying the advertising that Red Hat and other makers of OSS and Free software do. I am talking about the philosophy of Open Source Software. That itself needs to be advertised. An Open Source Software Consortium could be created and it would be their job to actually futher the knowledge of the OSS philosophy.
Yes, this would involve marketing campaigns. I know it sounds horrible to think, actually advertising a product, THE HORROR! I mean, if you look at most of today's marketing campaign it is not about the product anymore. The marketers have given up on selling product. Now, they sell peace of mind, time and good karma. Look at those adds and thinkg about what they are saying.
Nike - Just Do It!
Pepsi - The choice of a new generation. (Meaning if you want to be young(time) drink Pepsi)
Microsoft - They have a TV add showing nothing but a server. The voice-over talks about how the opening of the site went great, the IPO even better and now everyone is at a party. So, who's watching the servers? With MS, you don't need to. - Basically they are selling time, peace of mind as well as freedom.
If they can come up with that crap. Why is OSS unable to? I am far from being a marketing major or a marketing genius, but there has got to be ways to get people to listen and make OSS a household name.
It was said once that the revolution will not be televised. Of course, that statement was televised and so was the revolution. Let's televise our own revolution.
--
.sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I'm tired of the attitude that there's some kind of open source vs. closed source war going on, which is pushed by the popular media. There is not.
If there is a genuine need for something, or an interest in an open source version of some technology, then someone can build it. But don't make open source out to be some kind of single-minded mission. There are many many different kinds of people with different interests that happen to do open source work. To me, this is a bottom-up self organizing process, not anything that needs one leader or governing body and global strategies. That will never work! So what if there are ten .NET-like projects? So much the better I
think.
Hackers dislike authority. Welcome to anarchy, baby.
I think this antagonistic attitude is very destructive. The best stuff comes out of need and genuine interest in developing good software.
Fair competition is good, but rememember that the people developing closed source applications are people too before you pick up that gun! In fact, some of us do it as our day job.
-Kevin
I'm writing a mp3 jukebox right now, there are dozens I could have downloaded, but none had the features I was looking for.
Ahhh, you're just saying that cos you're old-skool, Stormie (not that I'm bitter that your UID# is only 1/2 as long as mine or anything).
But I have a fine counter to your argument; I'm currently posting to Slashdot from work, i.e. it's still preferential hanging out here than it is actually joining in with the "capitalist world" : )
Disclaimer: vague generalities and wooly arguments follow:
I've recently watched some war documentaries, read some stuff about history, some films like Napoleon, etc. etc -- the totality of which has formed in me the impression that:
People in the field know what's going on. Distributed units can take advantage of local situations as they change. Autonomous units can do things which advancing columns can't. Rapid reaction requires an ear to the ground and the autonomous authority to carry out immediate maneuvers and strategies. The Queen Bee doesn't direct her troops, but they independently seek out targets and communicate with each other. Etc. Etc. (add your own here)
Basically, the world is too big... and we can't just stand on a hilltop like Napoleon did, directing the battle as he surveyed the field laid out neatly in front of him. Today's hilltop is the boardroom, and comfy chairs -- hardly the same.
Ok, so please flesh out this wooly argument of mine with some concrete knowledge and examples of your own.
PS. I haven't read the article.
Looking over the last 7 years of Windows development,, the .Net runtime to me is a fruition of all the OCX/Active X/OLE initiatives: a way for all Windows programming languages to share code easily. C#, VB, C++, Delphi, Perl, Python: all can create code that can be used in other languages, easily. This is a huge advantage to MS and to programmers - everyone leveraging everyone else's code
.NET Microsoft is going to be eating Open Source's lunch? OSS is wasting time re-writing, while MS builds a pluggable component architecture, letting programmers everywhere leverage each other's work, no matter what the language.
The problem i see with open source, especially Linux, is that no person thought of bringing the same to that world. No one has created their own CLR that everyone can add into, sharing code much more easily and helping each other more: which would be a truly open source ideal.
Instead, in ONLY 1 shocking example, there still isn't even a unified ODBC standard in Linux - totally unbelievable. Perl, Python, Lisp, on and on, each have to create their own interfaces to databases - tens of thousands of lines of code re-written over and over again to do the SAME thing.
Do you see, just from this 1 example, that with
I think that is why the writer was complaining there is no leadership in OSS. Why didn't someone think of this before for the OSS world? Why are you still programming in the dark ages, like in the ODBC example? And Mono isn't the answer, as Ximian won't be around long enough to make it happen, and it isn't innovative at all, it is just a copycat.
alex
Like all good terroristic threats to society, Open Source development is (dis)organized into cells. That way, Mr. Bill, or the government of repressistan (currently == G8) can't hire/jail/purge/kill all the developers.
I thought one of the big points of O.S. development was that people worked (or hired someone to) on what was important to them. Seems like an efficent way to allocate effort to me.
Now, I agree that most O.S. software could use some help in the usability and interface departments. And, some day, I may get off my ass and do something about it. Or not.
Annonymous Coward -- "/. - the biggest am I troll or not site on that internet dojigger"
A feature that would be cool on a site like sourceforge is an organization that could channel aspiring developers to the right project. For instance: Developer A is thinking of developing a text editor, just for the experience. He posts his request along with his skill list on sourceforge. At the other end, someone (a volunteer?), goes through his request, or resumé if you wish, and helps him join the right project group. A simple thing as this one could probably get rid of many duplicate projects, and make it easier for newbies to join the OSS movement. Maybe I am just being naive, but I really think there is a lot that could be done for OSS in terms of virtual organization that could really make a difference. Even if the thought of scaling back all work on a product except the pure programming bit is tempting to any techie, it doesn't really work for very complex projects, with a complex user base. If you want to make a niche product like Doom then that's ok, because every user will play doom more or less the same way. But if you are going to build a truly competitive OS, then you need to think hard about all the different types of customers, who they are, what they know, and what they want.
Will code a sig generator for food
Bow down before me and worship.
Go forth and develop software that is good and plentiful.
Send me donations.
Live long and prosper.
Be nice to each other.
Who's with me?
Hierarachies work. That's why Microsft rules and open-source is now and forever will be a fringe movement.
Let's free software by giving it a leader!
Let's free developers by giving them a leader!
STOP screaming for leaders,
it will only make you followers.
It's not particularly easy to decide what is worthless. For example, when Steve Wozniak worked at HP he proposed that HP build a "personal computer". The HP management thought the idea was worthless, so Woz left and the rest is history.
Right now, every Linux project is like a bunch of a warring factions. This is a form of anarchy, and it has proven through history that anarchies do not do well in the bigger scheme of things.
In other places people don't say "warring" but "competing".
Why not merge IBM, MS and SUN under goverment control? After all they are "warring" trying to do essencially the same thing. Remember how well this type of centralized planning worked for the Soviet Union?
Maybe this is counter-intuitive, but an individual who is passionate about his work can bring about historical changes. It has happended many times in the past..
...richie - It is a good day to code.
anonymously posted by yet another karma whore
Or, y'know, alternatively we could continue to fight on all fronts exactly as we've been doing already (and people do actually seem to be making money after all). Anyway, who the hell wants to spend their spare time working for a giant multinational Linux Corp? Not me.
BTW, I think I should point out that Jay's doesn't always hit the mark quite right. Take a look at his premature eulogy for Slashdot. Take what he says with a pinch of salt, folks.
could you please elaborate on that? when and where did theo recently (if ever) create a problem for *bsd?
greetings, eMBee.
Gnu is Not Unix / Linux Is Not UniX
.. was the object of open source to "fight back against Redmond"? Sure, if they create some new product that's a good idea, theres no reason not to implement our own open version. This happens all the time. But if Microsoft released "Inflatable Dartboard v1.0" I get the impression that some jerk would release a free version, just because they feel the need to compete with MS.
From my point of view, I just want tools to get the jobs done that I need to do. If those tools happen to be similar to something released by MS, then fine. If not, thats just fine too. In my opinion, some of the best free software is that which was created to fill a niche of its own, not to compete against MS.
"But now, as we move into the next phase of the Internet, it's time to pick one overall strategy and stick to it. If OS continues on its lovably factioned way, it risks losing its important role in the future of the Internet."
Here read: ".NET is coming out, should there be Linux support?". This article was not about leadership for Open Source, it's about supporting M$ technologies - and this arguement has already happened with all the other Ximian/Mono articles that came out before this one. ( = 'bandwagon' + 'missed')
"Can O'Reilly, Stallman, and others agree on one approach and convince others to follow it"
Short answer: 'no'. It being Open Source, some people may want to work on supporting stufflikethis(tm), other mights not - but there should never be anyone standing up and saying 'Open Source should/should not support this project, and any work done to provide this support is valid/invalid.'
At the end of the day, it's going to be a bigger audience than this who decides whether it was worthwhile or useful.
insignificant sig
there is an article from Jay Greenspan which reports from Open Source Conference 2001, and I cannot agree with 99% of what he says. However, there is a point worth of discussion:
Great editorial. Because you can't agree with 99% of what he says, it cannot merit discussion. Christ, why can Slashdot not emply some journos for once...
Who cares about this, for crying out loud? Such 'commentators' should matter little to the OS movement. I am sick and tired (and sick and tired) of hearing the same old arguments from the same old, tired hacks, who have to make a living somehow. The strength of the open source movement is it's variety and this very lack leadership that everybody so bemoans. The current set-up leads to an anarchic, chaotic, but often happy and innovative playground the open source used to sit quite happily, before we discovered the what the initials VC stood for. The reason OS works is because it moves fast and sometimes in unexpected directions. Innovations are always going to come from this kind of background, and thank goodness for that. The OS movement is a testing ground, and ultimately a killing ground for ideas that don't work. Where movement OS leads, commercial concerns follow. Let's keep that way. Not stultify it with this Western Obsession with top-down hierarchies. Celebrate diversity, not uniformity.
Oh, hang on, you want an OS with one desktop? Try Windows.
Or, why not try AtheOS?
We prefer choice here.
So do I. I have a choice between the "Linux way", which is basically a huge mish-mash of diferent toolkits, window managers and desktop enviroments, and the "AtheOS way", which is basically a unified kernel, single GUI tookit, and a single user interface.
I'm seriously hoping to be able to use AtheOS as my "main" operating system at home within six months, instead of Mandrake 8.0 as I currently use know. Seriously.
if i dont like what the leader is doing, i fork the code. leadership in open source is very tricky.
"i was saying gnu-rd"
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
Some of these text editors are projects people start to learn how to program. Do you expect newbies to start programming Mozilla or KDE? Be a little realistic please.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Am I the only one who thought he was THE leader?
If there is a poll, the result would be obvious..
Who is THE Open Source Leader?
* Bruce Perens
* RMS
* Jon Katz
* Rob Malda
* Linus Torvalds
* CowBoyNeal
but we all know Gnome runs on Windows! So wrong on both counts mister.
Linux is a reimplementation of UNIX. The whole GNU tool suite is basically reimplementations of the UNIX Programmer's Workbench from the 1970s. "vi", claimed by some to be innovative, is a reimplementation of an overpriced product called the RAND Editor. X windows is a second system approach to the early UNIX window systems.
During the brief period that Linux companies had money, we didn't see much vision, either. Nobody came out with a desktop system that looked good and was easy to use. Nobody got a top graphic designer and a top interaction designer (yes, there are such people, and you should know who they are) to rework the user interface. The open source industry blew its chance to take on Microsoft.
That's the real problem.
The idea seems to ignore one of the great post-modern facts of life: leadership doesn't work. Germany did not need a 'strong leader' in the 1930's to fend off the 'redmond of europe'. Christianity does not need 'strong leadership' in the form of the Catholic Church. Evolution does not need the 'strong leadership' of Lamarck, but the anarchy of Darwin. Society runs better, more justly, more efficiently when more-or-less 'free' markets (i.e. when more-or-less 'anarchy') reigns. Government regulation to prevent tainted hamburder meat is OK, just as standards bodies to avoid tainted API's are not a bad idea. But 'strong leadership' eventually proves weak, corrupt, and and unjust. That anarchy is stronger and better, this is is the great post-modern idea of intellectualism in the 20th century. Its not an idea that should be lightly dismissed.
But there used to be many corporations competing with MS. Most are either gone (DRI), bought (Lotus, WordPerfect) or have given up (IBM). I'd bet at least half the people writing open-source would like to start companies and get funding for what they do.
But it's not going to happen. Venture capitalists don't want to fund MS competitors, because experience shows too much likelihood of failure. So the people who want to write operating systems, or word-processors, or GUI toolkits just do it for fun, supporting themselves with work in other areas.
And rather than look for the limitations, I think it's damned amazing how good lots of the free stuff is.
MacOS Programs layout their dialogs that way.
DCMonkey
Open Source has leadership, just not centralized corporate style leadership. That's part of the beauty of it--intelligent people working together without management because that would only slow them down. Leadership exists only where intelligence and creativity abound. It is the antithesis of Dilbert. The fact is, unlike the rest of the tech industry right now, Open Source is thriving, not floundering.
Go therefore, Write code, Have fun, Show your love, Change the world.
Could you imagine trying to force Open Source? "Oh, you know, in your free time, after programming for 10 hours, would you mind going home and writing this? I don't care what you want to do, we need this."
Why does anyone give a shit about Redmond, other than sheer boredom?
definitely: when you hear bill gates, you think of M$. We need someone that will link our minds with OS the way that Linus does with LinUx. Will the real OpenSource programmer please stand up? -- I think we're gonna have a problem here.
________________________________________________
People make lots of good points, I am impressed with the tenor of the discussion. My own .02 bucks:
:)
- linux v. bsd, kde v. gnome, etc, etc. The linux community spends a lot of energy bickering and re-inventing the wheel, instead of focusing on improving it. Could certainly use some direction. Can you imagine what would happen if everyone pulled in the same direction? Apple's original set of GUI standards gave everyone a target to shoot at. "But we already have standards," you say. I agree. We have many to choose from.
- since open-source is based on volunteer efforts, you can't realls "lead" them. You can suggest, encourage, cajole, etc, but really lead them? Perhaps we're anarchists by nature. I know that people are truly committed to general open source ideas, but getting programmers commit their free hours to ideas they might not like, telling them "please work under this person to write a procedure that does this specific thing" for the "common good", that would take a special talent. Some work is not sexy. It still needs to be done.
- if OSS will evet take off, some people will have to swallow some pride, for the common good. "I know you love your windowing manager / distro / editor / whatever and I know that many good people have worked hard on it and I know it has many strengths and in some ways is superior to the others. BUT we have too many of them. We need focus. So got for common good, I want you to set down your pet project and join with these guys here. I want you to work under someone who you don't know well and with whom you disagree."
- We already have leaders. We have one for each major distro / editor / compiler / package, etc. And they all lead in different directions. Who can possibly make them pull in one direction?
=brian
Somebody create an OpenPR/OpenFUD site at SourceForge.
where Open Source came from. In nature, it is purely an academic institution. This is not some commercial enterprise, it not a business, and does not need a leader. Indeed, leadership is contrary to very nature of the Open Source "Community". Granted, there are businesses that support the OS{M,C}, but they do not make up the OSC. The OSC is made up of individuals not businesses. Unfortunately the media likes to point at these businesses as being the OSC when they are not. IMHO it is their job to take what was designed by and for the OSC, and make it palatable for the mainstream.
Choice is good, fragmentation is bad.
It sounds like you're saying: If KDE and Gnome both produce a desktop, that's wasted effort. But if Microsoft and Corel both produce an office suite, that's competition and choice for the user. I don't see how those two statements can be compatible.
The shareholder is always right.
I know I don't, but some 733t penis-waving "I'm cool because I bash Windoze" zealots might...
If the open source community is to move beyond its current restriants it must become a social movement not just the technical niche it still is. This means embracing non-techies that love the social graces of Open Source tenets not the technology. Until this occurs I will remain an AC on /. as I have been for years.
1. Linus is plenty petty and childish when it comes to things he doesn't think are right technologically.
2. This was caused by Free Software wackos. Ever wonder why KDE is so much better than GNOME? Yep, good old proprietary QT.
3. I think you're off base here, you're seeing the situation through the eyes of a Linux user. In any case, Theo isn't a bigger asshole than most Open Source leaders.
4. Companies have to differentiate their product some how, the only way they can do that in open source is fragment.
5. Most stuff out there is trash, it's easier just to start over then to work with crap and have to deal with the asshole who wrote it on top of it.
6. Free Software wackos, again.
Someone who believes strongly in the first of the two visions will say that of course your two statements are compatible, because one describes competition within an entity (or within what he thinks ought to be a single entity) and the other describes competition between entities. (In the general case, I personally would not expect that any two "similar" open source projects/companies could in practice be made a single entity even in a limited sense; unless maybe everyone agreed to have their egos and personal preferences surgically removed.)
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
everyone should be a leader
Gee...in their rush to bash MS, they left out the Motif "check" boxes. They piss me off everytime I see them. They are either one shade or blue or another, with a little beveling that makes it ambigious as to whether they are pushed in or not.
In my experience Open Source apps are no better (or no worse) than many of the winders apps out there. There are some gems and there are some turds...on both sides of the fence.
Why can't they be happy?
Their stuff is distributed to tens (hundreds?) of millions of people, and there's no greater joy for a programmer than to see his work in use everywhere and by everybody. Besides that, they get a fat paycheck and most products don't fade into obscurity.
Open source DOES need a leader.
The open source is being ABUSED by many, and they are doing the abuse OPENLY.
One example is the abuse of the LINUX trademark !
Go to www.linuxmalaysia.org and see for yourself how the "Linux" trademark has been used to sell chocolate !
And I'd bet my dear penny that Mr. Linus Torvalds ain't get anything from all the sale of that awful chocolate !
This is just the beginning, folks. There'll be others using "Linux" as the bait to do whatever they want to do, and I won't be surprised if someone come out with "Linuxsex.net" or "Linux-dildo.com".
Please help stop the abuse of Linux trademark. Please help tell others about the abuse.
Thank you !
Open source DOES need a leader.
The open source is being ABUSED by many, and they are doing the abuse OPENLY.
One example is the abuse of the LINUX trademark !
Go to www.linuxmalaysia.org and see for yourself how the "Linux" trademark has been used to sell chocolate !
And I'd bet my dear penny that Mr. Linus Torvalds ain't get anything from all the sale of that awful chocolate !
This is just the beginning, folks. There'll be others using "Linux" as the bait to do whatever they want to do, and I won't be surprised if someone come out with "Linuxsex.net" or "Linux-dildo.com".
Please help stop the abuse of Linux trademark. Please help tell others about the abuse.
Thank you !
Finally a reasonable answer. I haven't spent enough time in MacOS to notice that.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I happen to think that's wrong -- not everyone in the open source community needs/wants the same thing. I happen to be very jealous of my CPU cycles; so I don't use either. I'm sure there are similar differences that help people make the choice between KDE/GNOME (I don't really know the specifics of how they're different.) I wouldn't want One True Desktop, as I'm pretty much guaranteed that it wouldn't be what I want, and many others feel the same way.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
>do the Open Source/Free Software movement need a 'leadership' to better fight back new stuff from Redmond?
First, the Open Source/Free Software movement cannot have a single leader or group of like-minded leaders because it is in fact divided into two different movements, the Open Source movement and the Free Software movement, whose goals and ideals are very different.
Second, the Free Software movement already has a leader; it's the GNU GPL. That single document contains all the properties necessary to lead the movement: inspiration, revelation, protection, legal standing.
OS/FS doesn't need a leader. Did RMS need someone to tell him to disclose Emacs source code? No, he was a smart man, he figured it out for himself. What he _did_ need was inspiration, that coming from his financial situation and his experiences at MIT. This is what the "unenlightened public" and most of the OS/FS community is lacking, and this is why there is a call for a leader, someone to exactly define the movement's purpose. But the real need is not of a leader, but of an educator. We (I use the word very carefully) need someone to spread the meaning of OS/FS. We who have already known the meaning need no leader; we already have the holy bible.
Here's the deal:
Open Source and Free Software both want success.
Open Sourcers think that success means dominance. The more Web Servers that use Apache, the better the job we're doing.
Free Softwarers think that success means adherance to doctrine (i.e. the GPL). If the GPL holds up in court, and copyleft protects free software, our goal is accomplished.
Free Software can exist whether or not Proprietary Software does. Obviously a lot of people would like to see OS/FS beat MS in a duel, but this is totally irrelevent to FS's ideals, albeit a huge ego-feeder.
That's the question...
If it were for me, I would vote for a silent man. Because I read somewhere that men believe women think silent men are the better listeners. So, I let you geeks believe that...as long as your chosen leader keeps silent most of the time, it's fine by me.