Slashdot Mirror
A Contrarian View of Open Source
Bruce Sterling's OSCON speech is now online - fun, light reading. And a reminder: the Global Civil Society design contest (which we mentioned before) is ending soon.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
You may as well just call it a "troll".
from the open-arms-and-a-threadbare-tank-top-and-unbuttoned -jeans dept.
Unbuttoned jeans? I thought that was a San Francisco thing, not a Slashdot Editor thing. Shows what I know.
What is a Contrarian?
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Contrarian
I can't believe people could go that long without refreshing /. or checking email.
Anything you say will be held against you.
On Slashdot it does.
I saw him give a speech once. It was terrible. He must have had it memorized word for word. He just went on and on talking about his futurist philosophy in a style that was very rigid. It seemed as though he had given the exact speech dozens of times before with the exact same words and jokes. The only thing that gave it any worth was the question and answer session where he suddenly stopped talking like a machine and became an interesting human once again.
Open source may be viral, but closed Src aids the spread of cancer!
example.org - powered by Linux!
*disclaimer*This is a re-post of a comment I made a while back.
I was a sysadmin for 7 years, the fact that lusers would never heed my warings, read the documentation, or flat out needed things repeated to them 20 times in a row made me decide to quit being the McDonalds coke and a smile "Hi How may I fix your computer today?"
Near my 7th year, I became frustrated, started telling people how stupid I thought they were to their face (Usually after the 8th time of explaining something) And generally degraded into the self absorbed irritating prick that I am today.
2 years later i'm still recovering. Where I used to fix my friends and families computers for free I now charge the shit outta them till they don't wanna come back. Everytime the phone rings my hair still stands up on end because i'm afraid of yet another person saying, "Hey toq just wanted to ask you a quick question!" No it's never a quick question, it's a gateway into a line of questioning not even the worse murderer would be subjected to in a police interregation.
And you dare say was I ever a sysadmin, jeesh. I'd bet money I could w00p your arse in a contest of skills any day of the week. Trust me kid, you just haven't burned out yet, but you will. And when you do, that's where open source with the lack of stupid people and politics will be waiting.
--toq
I suffered a temporary -1 to my intelligence.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Ok, this is completely offtopic, but I've had it with freaking USian... It's the United States of America I'm terribly sorry that later, there came to be different countries in areas that later came to be known as North America, Central America and South America, but those terms, correct me if I am wrong, came later. Even if they didn't, it's our country, it is the only one with "America" in the name, and calling ourselves after the name of our country is, it would seem, our right. Otherwise I will maintain that the "English" stop calling themselves that, because there are many countries that speak English.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Page after page of immature politics, strawman arguments (show me one person in the history of the Earth who ever talked about the "easy" life of miners), ignorance (Apple's "dinky" operating system? It's BSD Unix, you twit!), paranoia and just tired old wanna-be rebel hooha.
There's just nothing new or interesting left in the world.
You know, there's not even a pretense of sense there. It's purely words strung together for effect.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If someone posted that half-thought-out, irrational, outright wrong blather on Slashdot, the score on the POS would drop to -1 faster than the wintertime temperature in Antarctica. And yet here it is as an article. As a valid contrarian viewpoint.
Hell, why don't we just have the WIPO Troll write the next article? It'll make about as much sense, and be just as offensive.
How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
quote: "The result is 95% market domination by Microsoft. But that's not a market economy. That's not even capitalism. That is a state-capitalist, state-sanctioned monopoly that Mussolini would have smiled on."
:)
Carefully using a comparison to Mussolini to avoid Godwins Law I see
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
I wouldn't have called it "contrarian", as I personally agree with most of what he was saying, and I know a lot of people who work with me would as well.
What I found interesting was his comparisons of both Microsoft and of the Linux community as a whole. Granted, they were both skewed to the extremes, but I did notice something that I think applied to most people.
I consider myself a relative above-average user. I understand how to set things up, and general low-level techie questions about certain things are no problem, but anything more technical than that confuses me, and what's scary is that the average user is worse.
However, the average computer user really doesn't have a choice between the two. Microsoft runs most all the software (both apps and games) that anyone is familiar with. Sure, there is FreeCiv, the now-defunct Loki, StarOffice, and so forth, but in the end, it comes down to brand names, and people don't know Red Hat, or StarOffice, or anything. They know Windows and Office.
The other side of the story is that most Linux users I know are extreme power-users. They tend to get so wrapped up in their exploits of compiling the latest distros that they tend to talk over everyone's (including myself) head. Even though computers are complicated by nature, that's not what sells, nor will it ever sell. Look how complicated the RIAA/MPAA is trying to make digital downloads. They're getting no where fast that way.The only other thing that this article brought to mind was a question about what the Linux community wants to do with Linux. Say it upseats Windows. Say it takes over on both the server and the desktop. Say that 95% of all computers now run some distro of Linux...
Haven't we then just painted ourselves into the same corner that Microsoft is in, and wouldn't Linux receive the same amount of critisism for a variety of other things?
Just a thought. I'm sure it's been mentioned on here.....but just in case.....and I knew I was going somewhere with this......oh well.
Slashdot - Come for the creative thought, stay for the lesbians!
hahaha, that brought up SUCH old memories, I used that code so much I have it hardwired in my noodle, thanks for the flashback....
What is a Contrarian?
Aren't they from Pleiiades?
One who takes a contrary view or action, especially an investor who makes decisions that contradict prevailing wisdom, as in buying securities that are unpopular at the time.
Those wouldn't happen to be VA investors would they?
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Go ahead and mod me to hell, it has to be said: that was the stupidest thing I've ever read.
It was the weirdest mish-mash of mixed up metaphors I've ever seen. Did it even have a point? Was this man high as a kite at the time he gave this speech?
If this is the best contrarian viewpoint on open source that the convention organizers could rustle up, then they're either myopic to the point of blindness or intentionally self deluded.
Why couldn't they get someone who was serious to provide the oh so important counterpoint? Someone who would actually, you know, talk about real stuff like open source economics and how I'm going to make a living if the world ever does move to 100% open source software?
What a waste of (my) 15 minutes.
I don't know Mr. Sterlings' theological leanings but this part of his speech struck me as interesting.
I read a some writings by a Biblical scholar Hyam Maccoby (who incidentally is Jewish) which argue quite convincingly--to me anyway, though as I'm a Hindu that may not mean much--that Jesus far from being a rebel against the establishment was a mainstream Jewish Pharisee. The view we have of him today and for that matter the entire religion of Christianity, was largely the invention of St. Paul
Judaism has never been a particularly otherworldly religion and even ascetic sects like the Essenes were not against commercial activity. The whole reason there were moneylenders in the temple in the first place is that Jews were required to make donation on certain occasions such as the birth of a firstborn son (pidyon haben) and pay taxes for the upkeep of the temple. The moneylenders changed secular coinage into special temple shekels. So it seems pretty unlikely that Jesus the Pharisee would be aghast at such activity.
Another theory is that the High Priest and his followers were Saducees (a rival sect) and collaborators with the Romans. The crime of the moneylenders was supporting foreign occupation and as "King of the Jews" Jesus would want to have none of that.
By this reading, Jesus's political views were more Peoples Front of Judea (or Judean Peoples Front) than Bolshevik.
Is it just me, or does the "transparent hippie girl" analogy to OSS strike you as f***ing weird?
is not because it's good but because its enemies are so disorganized, incompetent, smug and full of themselves.
And full of shit.
Oh, I read it. I just didn't appreciate anyone calling Linux a slut.
Well, there are others you have to pay for...
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
But please. I understand he's gotta be snappy, he's gotta be interesting, or they'll start booking Scott Adams instead, but still...
Comparing coding to the life-shortening, near-slave labor of diamond mining? I'm thinking the guys down in Windhoek don't GET a choice fat-free lattes, or bitch because they have to walk all 50 steps to the Pepsi machine.
And then it must be comedic genious for him to then castigate people for then coming up with "farfetched, elegant, literary metaphors to describe this process." Like, I don't know, comparing it to diamond mining maybe?
I actually LIKE what he has to say in the majority of the speech, but to me he starts on such a bitter and weak note that it distracts from his message.
-Styopa
"Sorry, I don't do windows." :O)
...
"... I could w00p your arse in a contest of skills..."
Obviously not completely burned out yet. Wait until you start considering a job in construction, or driving a D9 Cat, or remodelling, or
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
As a quote: "venting my ever-growing fury!"
As a paraphrase: The whole computer scene just stinks.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Nothing like being a Troll at a conference, though - I'm sure he was bought a beer or two by some Linux geeks that didn't realize he was cracking on them harder than he was on Gates.
I actually really loved this speech, as I think did the packed room, including larry Wall and half of his family.
Of course it was over the top, of course it was sometimes cruel and mean to Open Source, of course it made fun of OSX, of course it compared Linux to a trailor park hippie, but it was also twice as mean to Microsoft, it raised some good points, and why couldn't we just appreciate a good rant? It was funny and hit home quite a few times.
And frankly the end of the speech, which predicts that geeks will be the next dissidents, sounds like a distinct, and scary, possibility.
Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em. (Terry Pratchett)
You idiot. People complaining about diamond miners was a hypothetical analogy. He was saying that people who don't code but try and tell coders what to do are idiots. They have no idea what it will actually take to do what they are asking; they think its easy.
I'm not going to deconstruct his analogy any farther. Go read the speech again and try some reading comprehension.
Oh, and just because he derides OS X (Which at a guess, you probably use) doesn't make him ignorant. He uses it too, and he clearly details why he believes OS X is "dinky". Again, a little reading comprehension wouldn't go amiss.
It may be that the original subjects of ESR's essay have been lost in time. Or just that newer readers don't know and have pointed the essay at something else. Eric was basically bitching about RMS back in the day.
Hell, maybe it's been twisted with the years in my head.
I really get tired of a bunch of whiney geeks bitching because people want to sully their precious, insulated geekspace with cultural issues (outside games and anime and Libetarianism, which, for some unfathomable reason, seem to be perfectly OK). Is that the key item to being a geek? A uncontrolled but always frustrated little ego that says "Bow down before me in my magnificent geektitude and don't ever mention the outside world because I can't handle that!"? Sheesh...
Grow up.
That is all.
See the CIA World Factbook
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
The funny thing about the "Linux Girl" line is that there was indeed a little slip of a hippie girl (wearing the requisite Birks), who does indeed attend MIT, sitting two seats to my left.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
(And I won't bother pointing out that it's not a "speach" either. Oops! Just did.)
It was an entertaining, thought-provoking rant. Did he offer an executive summary, or action items? Nope. He made some colorful comparisons.
What was his point? Other than to entertain -- which BTW seems to have been the first, second and fourth priorities -- it looks like he wanted people to question the assumptions that have taken root in the OSS community. Some people apparently don't want to question those assumptions.
Nope, no sig
As is Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Wales. They all have well defined national borders. The unity is purely political. If you are a natural British citizen, your nationality will be English, Scottish, Welsh, or Northern Irish.
Originally, Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland all had kings. Monarchs, rather.
Wales was conquered by England and no longer has a monarch. It became a principality of England (i.e. one of the monarch's children is the Prince of Wales), and the combined country is officially called "England and Wales". Wales has identical laws to England, although it was recently granted a Welsh Assembly which is politically between the UK Parliament and the local councils in Wales.
Scotland and England joined their monarchies in union, and they renamed the entire country "the United Kingdom", and took on the Union Flag (called the Union Jack when mounted on a ship's jackstaff). Scotland was not conquered, it is still voluntarily joined in union and could break its union if it wanted to. One of the acts of union was to join the Scottish and English parliaments, but recently the Scottish parliament has reopened, despite not being permitted to directly collect taxes from Scottish residents. It also has its own law system, and all the Scottish banks print their own banknotes, unlike English banks which have to have all their money printed for them by the Bank of England.
Great Britain, by the way, is geographical name of the main landmass and the archipelago of islands surrounding it, but not including Ireland and its little islands. Ireland and Britain are seperated by the Irish Sea. Britain is also known as the British Isles.
The UK then conquered Ireland, and shipped non-Catholics to the northern parts of it while keeping the native Irish under duress. Many years later, when Ireland was conquered back from the British by the IRA. However, the non-Catholic settlers protested, so they split the country into the still-British Northern Ireland, and the Irish Ireland.
The country is now known officially as "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". In a strange twist of language, your passport says "British citizen" and identifies you as coming from the "United Kingdom".
god, i don't miss college.
MORTAR COMBAT!
"The machines are slow, the programs are bloated, the changes are cosmetic, just like the heyday of Detroit's Big Three carmakers, so many years ago."
Machines are faster than they've ever been and getting faster.
"Bloat" depends on the program. There is plenty of lean, fast software out there.
The innovations in the computer industry over the last 5 years have certainly not been simply cosmetic. WTF have you been?
Get your Brucey head out of your Sterling ass, or better yet, slap yourself silly for cutting on the coders and architects who are giving you all this shit for free.
By all means, read it for fun... e.g. note Sterling's attempt at categorizing proprietary software company strategies as relationship headgames, where Linux comes in as this weird hippie chick that likes doing geeky guys... just don't expect too much of it.
Sometimes I think Slashdot may have painted itself into a corner... they ended up running a link to *this* Sterling rap, because it's about the sterotypic concerns of slashdot, not because it's a particularly interesting one. Try this one: Without Vision, The People Perish. There's at least a chance that he's on to something there.
I'd rather read copies of Lawrence Lessig's shopping lists than this pointless, inane, poorly organized blather.
Admittedly, I stopped reading the article after a while. It was making my brain hurt.
This sig no verb.
FACT: It was me, I was "Guy in Audience"
Seriously, though I did not know that I would be quoted.
come on fhqwhgads
I mean come on, dating metaphors for OSS geeks?
Scott.
So, since the people from the USA wont come up with their own name for just themselves, the rest of the world has to do it for them, be it "USAians" or "Yanks" or "Starbucks" (I actually heard that one a while back) or "'merkins". The problem is that if you don't come up with the name yourselves there's a good chance you'll get saddled with one you don't like
I can only apologise for the poor spelling and numerous typos in the proceding post. Slashdot appears to have some form of effect on all posters, eventually. The horror!
I have a sneaking suspicion that there was a point to that lecture, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it is.
... do... whatever.
From what I can determine from moments of coherency:
He hates Microsoft
He hates Macs
He hates Linux
He hates Open Source
He's not a programmer, nor will he ever be.
From all I can tell, he finds flaws with every philosophy, so we should probably just trash it all and start over from scratch. I'd read it again just to be sure, but I need to get back to my grueling free code development, lest he inspires me to give it all up.... to
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Uhhh... You mean geekspacetime right?
[[Linux OS "user experience" is] like life in a refugee camp. If you want Doctors Without Borders to show up, you don't want to have yourself any kind of really nice refugee camp.]
:^)
That's not true. I had malaria in Zaire, was staying in a bed, had three meals a day (when I could make it), and there was even beer nearby and Dr's w/o Borders still made two house calls *and* gave me medicine for less than $3 US.
Think my metaphor's about as on target as most of this guy's? Not so fast... if there's one thing the Mac's about it's UI, and as a long-time Mac user (about 12 years) I'm pretty danged tired of all these converts that say how awesome the Mac is now that it's got FreeBSD up under the hood.
Sure OS 9 was dated technology those last few years (still not sure how "[Mozilla's] bug-track completely wrecked System 9" for the contrarian, though), but its interface was still head and shoulders above the rest. Not sure why that was bad and OS X is good, but to get the Doctors Without Borders to come to town, you don't need a nasty interface -- you just need to have geeky underpinnings.
You might have to reach to see what the guy's saying sometimes, but other than the times when he's obviously going for laughs it's worth the trouble to figure out what he means. If the metaphors don't make sense, try again.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
I can't believe how many people think that the "cathedral" in Raymond's essay refers to commercial software. He was contrasting the management styles of Linus and Stallman, and implying that Gnu would have made much faster progress if it has used a "bazaar" model.
So what exactly are you complaining about? If you don't like the command line, you don't have to use it, there's a GUI in OS X you know.
From the article: "Stuff like "the Cathedral and the Bazaar." Now, I get it about being the bazaar. I'm a science fiction writer, I got no problem at all with bizarre stuff. But commercial software? Microsoft? As a cathedral? "
I thought that ESRs whole Cathedral vs. Bazaar thing was that Gnu and RMS represent the "Cathedral" (ie: carefully controlled who gets to contribute, everything falls along into RMSs grand vision, RMS as a fanatic Free-Software religion). And that Linux and "open source" represent the bazaar (ie: looser collaboration on things, some commercial interest is tolerated, it ain't pretty but it works kind of thing).
Maybe I got it all wrong though...
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
He's not the only one who feels this way.
I think that many of us are torn between the extreme right (Microsoft, Apple) and the extreme left (Linux). Sorry but we feel like we don't belong in any of them.
I was initially inclined to agree with you, but I don't think calling this a troll is fair. Even the use of the term contrarian was a bit vague (contrary to what?...). From what I gathered, the purpose of this rant was not so much a point-by-point dissection and dismantling of the open-source (insert free software, Linux, etc. if you prefer) movement, but semi-stream-of-conciousness jibe at the whole community. I agree that some of his points weren't very clear (or coherent for that matter) and many of the metaphors didn't seem to fit too well, but if you read to the end, he's actually pretty positive toward our kind.
Although I'm not too familiar with his work, keep in mind this is a novelist writing this, and a fairly cynical one at that.
"We are far too easily pleased." --C.S. Lewis
Yes, in many ways, MS looks more like ESR's bazaar -- "release early?", sure that's why no X.0 release from MS ever works as expected/documented. "Release often?", definitely, you have to maximize the revenue stream by getting people to pay for upgrades (which fix the bugs in those X.0 releases that shouldn't have been).
There are days when I look at the huge steaming heaps of half-working, awkward, ugly, incomprehensible software on my Linux box, compare it to the glowing promises from the developers, and wonder if ESR hasn't done more damage to the Free Source/Open Sores movement than MS ever could.
Bruce Sterling proclaimed: Have you ever seen a cathedral? Cathedrals are medieval religious centers where people do penance and take vows of poverty. They worship relics of the holy dead in there. Microsoft is a commercial software company. It's the commercial software company. It's got to be about the least cathedral-like structure known to humankind.
I thought the question was, "have you ever built a cathedral?" Now, even Eric Raymond wasn't particularly clear about this, but going back to his first presentation of the analogy, the cathedral was the software, not the place where the software was created. (Of course, the problem is that when Raymond discussed the bazaar, he equated the bazaar to the open source community, not to a piece of software.)
It seems to me that working for Microsoft building Windows XP must be a great deal like working for the Church building a cathedral that the Church will then require every member to use on pain of torture by copyright law.
Eric S. Raymond wrote: But I also believed there was a certain critical complexity above which a more centralized, a priori approach was required. I believed that the most important software . . . needed to be built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation, with no beta to be released before its time.
Linus Torvalds's style of development - release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity - came as a surprise. No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here - rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches . . . out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.
The fact that this bazaar style seemed to work, and work well, came as a distinct shock. As I learned my way around, I worked hard not just at individual projects, but also at trying to understand why the Linux world not only didn't fly apart in confusion but seemed to go from strength to strength at a speed barely imaginable to cathedral-builders.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Yeah, he seems to hate everything. He's your classic whiner. Almost anyway... the only difference is that you shut out most whiners after the first sentence, but this guy keeps you hanging on till the end, hoping I guess that he'll say something remotely constructive. He never did, did he? Did I just miss it, or did he really spew pages and pages of whining bitchery without one constructive comment?
I must admit though, I did enjoy reading it just a bit. I can relate to it I think. I'm feeling a but disgruntled myself lately with the whole computer industry. And the problem isn't so much that the industry is messed up (and bad), but more that I feel there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. All I can do (and I'm a programmer)
is sit and watch the Bill Gates' of the world force feed us this pile of steaming doo-doo we somehow call an industry. My skills would be equally effective if I took up a career as a hair dresser.
Sometimes I guess a good bitch session can be fun... and he does it well.
And I quote:
"Like the story of Jesus Christ chasing the moneylenders out of the temple. I know this is kinda hard for contemporary people to get their heads around, but Jesus Christ used to beat people up with a whip for being capitalists."
Honestly...Christ wasn't angry at the people because they were Capitalists, he was angry at them for a couple of reasons, one of which being that they were defiling the sacred nature of the Temple. The area that had been turned into a den of merchants was the only area of the temple where the Gentiles (Non Jews, for those who don't know) could worship. By having all those people shouting and hawking their wears, it would be nearly impossible for someone to focus on worship!
It also should be noted that those people shouldn't even have been in there in the first place! They were supposed to be setting up shop outside the temple (had they been following the rules, Christ wouldn't have had a problem with them, since they did provide a service: They were able to provide sacrificial animals to people who were from out of the country, and unable to bring their own sacrifices along with them), but the priests, in their infinite wisdom, decided 'Hey! We can get a lot of money from these folks, by charging them money to set up shop in the temple walls! Who cares if we're blaspheming the temple with this, we can get rich!' So, basically Christ was removing the corruption from the temple, or at least some of it.
I could probably go on for a while longer on this topic, but it would, more then likely, become increasingly offtopic and start to become extremely boring for a lot of people, so I figure I'll just end it here.
This post is not intended to be offtopic, trolling, or flamebait, if it is construed in that manner, then I apologize.
if linux is like a free-love hippie chick...microsoft windows is a high priced dominatrix that makes you pay to get locked in a wooden box and then when you try to pay more to be let out, you are just told that true pleasure is being locked in a wooden box.
strangely a lot of people seem to believe her when she tells you this.
you probably shouldn't have read this.
I found it refreshing because it's very easy to get down, or confused, about the state of affairs today. A maniacal humorous take is just the right subjective approach. In Terry Gilliam's Brazil, there's like 10 lines of serious social criticism.. but the whole work is extrememly effective as a warning.
/. a great piece was posted, called "Reclaiming the commons". It was long and mainly about non-geek issues. Yet one of the /. editors highly recommended it. Why? It's not News for Nerds. It wasn't about the Sony P3's new chip. Why was it posted?
I think the people here, esp. the coders, didn't like the message because it involved so many threads that they can usually ignore. The idea that the inequity of software relationships can be seen from a much larger perspective, and somehow tie in with all of this messy political stuff, like diamond miners in South Africa... well, it's just frightening. Coders aren't diamond miners, after all! We're powerful important people. We aren't used by the man! The man loves us.. he gives us better TV to watch and dental plans.
Just this weekend on
Bruce Sterling hit the nail right on the head. The geeks, he is telling us, along with everyone else are going to have to become dissidents, and then activists.
Because this is a real time of reckoning about freedom and how we may want to change the way we govern ourselves; we all should be prepared. Bruce Sterling's speech is a humorously contrarian introduction, aimed at geeks. But don't stop there.
Go and eat at an urban McDonalds, get a copy of US News & World Report, watch some MTV skin-flick or FOX News, or try not using your ss# for a while, or try tracking your vote to any actual political action (or comparing your vote to a company dollar), and top it all off with a visit to the local garbage dump, 'cause it's gonna smell better there.
Then go and read the commons article. Then read opensecrets.org, or cryptome.org, or the books "Understanding Power" (Chomsky) or "Empire" (Hardt & Negri) or the Declaration of Independence. Not that you have to sign-up with any political party, but these things will change your mind about how the world works, and your role in it.
At the end of doing all of this myself, I didn't needed to be preached to anymore. It's not just the software debate. It's not just the music debate. It's not just the accounting debate. It's the way of the world that is systematically confused. "The American Dream": this Ad sponsored by Pepsi and Brittney Spears' bouncing boobs. Is this really what it's supposed to be like?
I'm reading all I can and planning for a better way of life.
Haha, that was the funniest thing I read so far under this article. +1 Funny
Honestly, you have no idea whether christ was angry or not. or whether any of that stuff is true or false or half true/false. all you have is an opinion about a 2000 yr old story.
In the geek defense ... writing 'pure' elegant code is an offence to a mercantile culture, analogous to running double-diamonds on one ski among a camp of cripples. An offence for two (2) reasons: first, each behavior rejects 'the system' as justifier of individual behavior (lawlessness): second and more serious, some merchants do aspire to esthetic creation and some cripples I have seen blasting reckless down double_diamonds (blasphemy). I think we need not like the geek culture to see its true value.
I'm surprised by all the comments that Sterling's speech was devoid of substance. His verbal pyrotechnics may have gotten in the way at times, but that's Sterling's schtick and he's awfully good at it. Any reasonable person ought to have been able to see through the fireworks to his many substantial points, among which were:
Open source and free software are largely about their own subculture and the social aspects of that subculture rather than about software per se.
Software written by and for programmers is unlikely to have mass appeal, but it has powerful appeal to programmers.
Free software and open source will only become relevant to the average user when they start to take users' tastes and concerns into account.
The cryptic and balky nature of current open source and free software is a draw to programmers not only because it reflects their values, but because it's in such a sorry state that there is a trenchant humanitarian appeal to help out. (By implication, better software might reduce the amount of help available, and the movement might become a victim of its own success eventually.)
Another factor drawing programmers to this development model is the lack of responsibility, since they can quit at any time.
Raymond's cathedral/bazaar metaphor does not seem to apply very well, and on examination, it's unclear what he even meant by it. Microsoft is a bazaar company, not a cathedral company. So are most software makers.
People feel increasingly oppressed by commercial software, particularly Microsoft's. They are waking up to the way the software manipulates them against their own interests.
Viruses have in particular been a wake-up call.
Free software and open source are largely imitative rather than innovative, or "piratical" rather than "creative".
Free software and open source have hidden costs, including the cost of needing to become part of a particular subculture to use them effectively.
Information is not free. Information has intrinsic costs deriving from the social context of the information. Information merchants use particular strategies to make it difficult to change established relationships. Among these are restrictive contracts, brand-specific training, search costs, proprietary formats, durable purchases, and loyalty programs.
The open source and free software community is facing a social transition from a small geek subculture to a significant dissident standing. This is going to present serious challenges.
That's scarcely a complete list of the points of substance in this talk. It may not be Sterling's finest hour -- his forte is fiction, after all -- but it is by no means a bunch of insubstantial blather. In fact he touches on many neglected but important issues.
--
Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org
There was actually a lot of interesting stuff in that speech, some of which was true, some of which was not, and much of which was just incoherent ranting, but who wants to hear the same viewpoint over and over?
Say what you like about Sterling's content, but his form is pure fresh air. If Hunter S. Thompson had been born 20 years later, his prose would have been much like Sterling's speech - inciteful (now THERE's a Moderation category), funny, testing a limit by exceeding it.
Thanks Bruce.
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
This was billed as 'a contrarian viewpoint to open source' or whatever. If the guy just wanted to get up and rant for an hour then they should've billed it as such. If it had been 'Bruce Sterling rants on the state of the software industry' then more power to him (and them), even more so if it was entertaining.
Its like Microsoft offering a 'contrarian viewpoint to commercial software' and then putting Carrot Top on stage to rant for an hour or so instead of getting someone who could actually articulate the significance of open software.
I think the point implied is that the GUI has regressed in OSX, even if it looks more colourful.
But a sintome of the problem. The problem is Liberty and Democracy and all those frenchy things that are older then america (or about the same time)...
Cheers...
That would be a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer. It used to be the biggest size used in heavy construction, but now they actually go up to D11. The D9R weighs a mere 48,874 kg (107,548lb.) in fighting trim, while the D11R CD, used mainly in mining, weighs 113,000 kg (248,100 lb.) There are mining machines large enough to carry a D9 in their bucket, and have room left over.
:O)
I note that the D11R CD features "smooth, one handed, Finger Tip Control (FTC) for steering and transmission".
The site doesn't work quite right in Opera 5 but the info is all there. The menus don't seem to work in Mozilla 1.0. Must be done by a Windozer
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
New VA investors could be considered contrarian, early VA investors would be sheep, or pigs. Contrarians would be the people who were selling in 1999 and 2000 and are big on the telecommunications industry now.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I was there for this speech; it brought the house down but a lot of it was in the delivery. Sterling is a talented reader with great stage presence (and this was evident in spite of the fact that he was sitting behind a table reading from his notes the whole time). Whoever typed up the transcription should jsut release the mp3 then you'll get it.
Copyrights are not a free market property right, but a bullshit government granted monopoly that cause all sorts of incompatabilities, and stagnate innovation. In fact most big corporations are not free market at all, but feed off of similar government regulations, special treatment, and bullshit. (including the federal reserve, he didn't say that but I put it in for him)
In the copyright area, Linux gets arround this by being free and transparent, but that makes it a threat to the other people who make a living by fscking the ignorant when it comes to software. However, most people don't have the intellectual or personal balls to say that copyrights are bullshit - so instead they all bicker over stupid things (eg Lessing)
Why does anyone in the Linux or /. communities give a flying fuck what Sterling says or thinks? He's a very minor celebrity, nothing more. Would you care what a second-string running back in the NFL thinks of Linux if it were expressed as badly as Sterling's mess?
Mussolini did say: "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
The governmental system he described sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it?
Erlang.org: wow
Going way back to v1.0 of tCatB, the Cathedral was GCC and Linux was the bazaar. ESR was comparing two different free software projects. He was comparing the fast, vital development of the Linux kernel with the glacial pace of GCC and (dare I say it?) the HURD.
The original point was to look at the biological, evolutionary dynamic of the bazaar model -- swarms of coders throwing patches into the ecosystem, seeing which ones live and breed and which ones die on the vine -- as compared to the cathedral -- rigorously planned, multi-year efforts guided by a Supreme Architect and his cadre.
Putting "closed-source software" in the role of the Cathedral is sheer revisionism.
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped." --Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
He's merely being accurate and discussing Fascism, not Nazism.
Fascism is Italian in origin. Literally. It refers to the 'fascia', which was the flag the Roman troops carried as identifiers, ( and now means form of 'facing').
Mussolini sought to recreate Rome as a modern industrial state with the workers bonded in allegience to a state owned 'employer', and thus Mussolini himself as "Emperor."
KFG
I'm not sure which Cathedral and the Bazaar you read, but the one by ESR likened commercial software development to the cathedral and open software development to the bazaar. The terms "cathedral" and "bazaar" refer only to the process by which software is developed.
The issue which CatB addresses is the belief that software that wasn't carefully designed and controlled would have lower quality than software which was. ESR's response was that for the most measures of "quality" (robustness, bug-freeness and so on) bazaar-developed code could actually be better. The price you may pay is that the scope of the software, may change from what you originally intended it to be (e.g. fetchmail). On the other hand, it may well be better than you intended.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
You mean "There's at least a chance that he's on something there."
This one had me in awe: Newer York, New York After the Great Blaze of 2015, Manhattan went green - thanks to Bill Gates and bambootekture.
By Michael McDonough (as told to Bruce Sterling).
This is a tag-team battle-royale of the imagination!!
----
Not to be confused with Col.
Then who is the hippy chick who will put out? WHERE is she??? Oh wait, that was just a metaphor
You must be from outside the Americas. I've discussed this issue with dozens of Canadians, ten or so Mexicans, four Brazilians, two Argentinans and a Peruvian. (I'm meeting a Venezuelan this afternoon, I'll add her to the collection, but I really doubt she'll shift the demographic.)
NONE of those people have ever referred to themselves simply as Americans - North Americans, South Americans, Central Americans and even Latin Americans, but not "Americans".
ALL of them refer to citizens of the USA as "Americans". Not one has ever used USian or UnitedStatesian in normal conversation, though one of the Canadians occasionally likes to use USian in online discussion "just to get Americans' goats". One of the Mexicans pointed out that Mexico also consists of United States (i.e. it's the United States of Mexico).
NONE of them feel in the least offended by the common use of "American" to refer to USA citizens.
I suppose it's possible that these people aren't typical, and that the majority of Pan-American people who aren't from the USA bitterly resent having to use a prefix in order to be identified with the two continents as a unit, but I doubt it.
I suspect that terms like USian are normally only used by people from outside the Americas who want to be PC, and only in venues where citziens of the USA are likely to be among the audience. I have never heard a citizen of Great Britain, for example, when speaking to another GBian, refer to a USian. They're either Yanks, or they're (gasp!) Americans.
It seems to me that the goal of the author is to be as ridiculously contrary as possible...to everyone. However, the most offensive peace is his awful attempts to parallel Jesus Christ with the open source community. To imply that Jesus chased the moneylenders out of the temple is just sheer ignorance of the Bible...and offensive.
"Herbivores eat well cause their food never, ever runs."
Frankly, based on the responses here it seems he hit a nerver with some awfully thinskinned people who think that they float and gloat ABOVE water let alone walk on it.
Software is a business. It's not engineering, it's not art or karma or cool. It's product. It's accidently good in spite of itself. And to the extent that it is a good product then it is good. Beyond that it's just sophistry to beat your chests about how great YOU think it is. Because if it was then it wouldn't be anarchy to build it.
Kudos to Bruce.
"I had malaria in Zaire"...
I have such a boring fucking life.
It's the most accurate rant on open source I've read/heard in a while. Bruce might not be a coder but he seems to beable to relate to us well. And he has a better grasp as to what is going on outside of the source than most of us do.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire