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.

Comments

This gem

[Otter]

In general, if there's a point in here beyond the Eric Raymond-ish hand-jobbing of the audience, it was entirely lost on me. This chunk particularly stood out, though:

So, I let Cory convince me and I installed Mozilla on my Mac. And its bug-track completely wrecked System 9. So I stopped fighting with Cory Doctorow. Not because he was winning the argument, but because his fucking Open Source solution cost me three days of desperate effort to restore my files! So I took the further trouble to install System X, and I backed up everything of course, but I still don'tget it about System X quite frankly, and neither does System X. It never knows what it's running. There are chunks of Microsoft code in there like giant lumps of black putty just lying to you about what they are doing on the Internet. It's like trying to wade through drilling mud running this thing. It steers itself by committee.

You know, there's not even a pretense of sense there. It's purely words strung together for effect.

Re:This gem

[realdpk]

How is it well-written? It's some incoherent mess about going from System 9 to System X and then Microsoft black putty. "I still don't get it about System X". What?

mussolini

[sfraggle]

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 :)

Better slut than a whore

[Subcarrier]

Oh, I read it. I just didn't appreciate anyone calling Linux a slut.

Well, there are others you have to pay for...

It was a really funny... and scary talk

[mir]

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.

Re:It was a really funny... and scary talk

[Russ Nelson]

Gee, the people who heard it seem to have a better opinion of it than the people who are reading it. Perhaps it was Bruce's delivery, in his mild southern accent, which did it? Certainly it inspired Larry Wall's "Preach it, Brother!"
-russ

Oooh! Such Criticism...

[frank_adrian314159]

After reading the initial criticism of Bruce's talk here, I am amazed. Wow! How dare an artist take some of our precious geektime to explain things in a different context! Doesn't he understand that Open Source is serious business? My God, next thing you know, we might actually have to learn that the rest of the world doesn't think like we do and that's OK.

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.

Not a great Sterling rap... here's a better one:

[doom]

I'm a big fan of Bruce Sterling, I'm even a big fan of his free-wheeling public speaking gigs like this, but this is just not that great a Sterling rap. He just doesn't know enough about what he's talking about, and -- a rare event, for Sterling -- hasn't suceeded in coming up with any unusual insights into the subject.

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.

Re:Stupidest speach ever

[MadAhab]

"Stupidest speach ever" gets modded to 5? OK, here's a contrarian viewpoint, then: you are too illiterate to offer a legitimate opinion of the speech. Not that I rest my case on your spelling; not that I need to when you offer up this gem:

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, first you insult him, now you want him to give you a job?

The entire speech is about the economics and politics that arise from open source! First he said that traditionally, we've been working with bad metaphors. Cathedrals and bazaars make some kind of sense, but a real writer would never choose those metaphors because so many of the resonances of the symbols are just plain wrong. So he talks about closed-source software and users like it's a really bad girlfriend/boyfriend relationship - you know, where each person has something that the other one wants (hint: one of those things is wealth). Then he talks about the VALUE PROPOSITIONS that keep these bad relationships together. Go back and read those value propositions again if you seriously want to know the answer to your question. Remember that everyone has flaws, so which flaws are you willing to live with?

See if you can use your little noodle and work it out from there what he was talking about. Yes, the metaphors are free-form. That shouldn't be surprising, given that this is roughly the outline of the speech:

"I don't code, but here's a couple things to let you know that I understand how the world looks to people who do... It's not easy to communicate, and that's why people are using some crazy metaphors. The one that is best well known doesn't even work very well, and here is why... Now let's try some new metaphors and see if we can use them to get at what's really going on here..."

Man, there's not much hope left if y'all don't want to think.

points of substance

[tim_maroney]

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