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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.
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I can't believe people could go that long without refreshing /. or checking email.
Anything you say will be held against you.
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 all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Exactly: This is an example of typical natiocentricical thinking. This even trickles to the state level, i.e., californitinos, louisiajuns, and canaminesottians to name a few.
:)
The USian reference is a deunificating process by which the majority befog political borders.
Be sure to visit Bruce at his site. He is a Texican.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
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!
I may be mistaken, but I think that people from the UK prefer to be called British, Irish, Scottish (etc) and actually take offense to the term "English." Personally, I could care less what people in other countries call me, and aside from the horrible spelling and grammar implicit in the abbreviation "USian," I'm fine with that.
And, on a side note, I believe that the portion of the continent upon which the U.S. sits was originally dubbed "America" (after some cartographer, I believe), and the term was later extended into Canada and the southern continent. So I guess maybe technically (and out of simplicity) we could call ourselves Americans.
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.
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
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)
Actually, if you read carefully, he prefers Free Software. He sees Open Source as a lesser evil when compared to the unholy of unholies.
That is all.
I think it's "Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", encompassing England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
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.
Any sysadmin ever gets uppity with me over a simple question
A simple question would be one thing, a simple question repeated over and over again by the same person could be seen as a sign of insanity. I.e.
3 a : extreme folly or unreasonableness b : something utterly foolish or unreasonable
*taken from websters*
The folly being, the user just relies on the support personal to do the thinking for them on the most basic of computer functions.
Take for example, someone that asks too many questions about M$ office suites.
There are many small schools out there inside of places like staples that can provide the *proper* enviroment for training in these softwares. Yet most people tend to rely on their internal support staff for things like changing the color and size of fonts.
Since learning is important to a support person, and not a user, then wouldn't the support persons time be better spent learning how to lessen their own load? Simple things like having time set aside to lay out templates, use the answer wizard for office installs to create better automated installs (with said included templates) Create documentation (which is useless because lazy people would rather ask questions)
Thing you don't realize is if you quit wasting all the admins time on your patheticly stupid simple questions, he, she, they would have more time to make your life easier and simpler.
I've yet to walk into a company who's management want's to take this type of proactive support because most upper management relies very heavily on this "just in time" support model. It sucks, I've been through it enough. I think the whole MS product line is a complete waste of time for IT departments because ultimately it is the users and upper management that fuck it up... Not the admins.
So next time you ask your sysadmin a stupid word question, better hope it's not me, cause i'm a 190lb lean mean gorrilla now that I go out and exercise daily. We'll see who tosses who out the window OK?
--toq
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
god, i don't miss college.
MORTAR COMBAT!
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.
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 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
Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.
[[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.
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.
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.
If you really think he was cutting coders, I'd have to rate your reading comprehension as rather low. I love free software myself. I don't use anything else if I can help it, which is most of the time. So I feel pretty confident in saying you gotta have your head far up your ass to think he was cutting on coders or telling untruths when he said of free(dom) software: "It's very offensive to user sensibilities and it is as ugly as a sack full of penguin guts. But, you know, that is a vital systemic advantage." Or: "You keep feebly hoping that something will actually work right out of the box, and maybe even look nice. But then you get stuff like Gnome, KDE and Eazel... They just don't like to do the boring stuff for the stupid people! That's just not in the job description! It's not even a job. That's the secret." Right! Those are "flaws" in some sense, but those flaws are the only reason the damn thing works at all, and he sees how badly we need it: "But at least open source is clearly better than the Microsoft stranglehold. Man, US Steel, General Motors and Standard Oil at their worst and cruellest were better than that." Right!"
The responses to this article are so negative that I think we're in real trouble. First, geeks used to be able to talk in "code". Get it? Abstruse metaphors were like candy. Smart was good. Literate was worldly. Now it looks like towing the party line and shutting out, yes, "contrarian" views could doom this stuff to a band of easily isolated, mischaracterized "fringe elements." Second, we're in trouble if that's the case, because this shit is getting big and ugly pretty fast. Go ahead and whine about Dmitry, chat about "the cause", whatever. Keep fiddling while they strip-search you. This stuff could get really bad really soon, and as long as the geek set is anti this and not pro that, as long as the geek political mindset is "we don't have any friends and we don't think we need any", no one is in a position to stop the juggernaut.
Seriously, read the speech again with your brain present this time.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
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.
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?
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.
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)
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)
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."
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've had it with freaking USian... It's the United States of America
I totally agree with your larger point about USian but I have to say you do a piss poor job of arguing it. The different areas know as North America, Central America et al. did not get those names after America the country but before. The America that we are the united states of refers to the entire "new world". You argument about the English is silly since it's not refering to the language the speak but the fact that they live in the country of England which is also where the language comes from and thus the language is "English" because like English people it comes from England. (I realise at this point you could get REALLY pedantic and say that "English" to the Angles so an archaic "English" language precedes the nation)
The real argument against "USian" is that it is pedantic, silly, sounds ugly and nobody in the real world uses it. And if we are being so pedantic that we reject "American" on logical gounds "USian" is just as wrong for just as valid a logical reason since it would also refer to citizens of the United States of Mexico (and there are probably other "united states of _____ " out there).