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 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...
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!
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.
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
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)
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
To offer a different reading on this topic, which assumes that the story presented in the Bible is factual, -
I think that Jesus was rather disgusted at the layers of elitism that the moneychangers were putting between the common folk and God. First, the moneychangers and other merchants there were also "inspectors" that looked over the animals that the Jews would bring to sacrifice, to inspect that they met ceremonial laws. They would then deny the animal a passing status, and would offer to buy the animal, and sell an acceptable sacrifice for an extra fee. Then, they would turn around and sell the animal that they had just denied was an acceptable sacrifice as an acceptable sacrifice. Secondly, they were set up in the court of the Gentiles, taking it over, which basically denied the non-Jewish God-fearers a place to worship.
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 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
You mean "There's at least a chance that he's on something there."