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5th Anniversary of Open Source
Augustus De Morgan writes "Five years ago today a brainstorming session in Palo Alto led to the adoption and promotion of the "open source" label. (You can find references to the label much earlier, however.) For some, it was a dark divergence from the free software movement; for others, the beginning of the adoption of key software principles into mainstream. Here's a growing set of resources and stories about the history of free and open source software, and a lament about the decline of altruism in the open source community."
Excellent - lets hear it for less altruism! The more people who write quality Free software because they need it themselves, because they take pride in their own work, and because they want to profit from it, the better. Selfishness is the route to quality in all things, from life to Free software.
That we should eat a piece of paper with the recipe for a cake written on it?
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Today is the 200th year anniviersery of the term 'democracy.' The idea had been around a long time before in Greece, but this was the first time when the idea had enough clout for an anniversery to be set... as such a great idea *has* to have an anniversery.....
Today is also the five year anniversary of the peak of the AOL stock price. Coincidence? I think not.
Altruism is important, but ultimately people make most decisions on an economic basis. And people develop Open Source software for the recognition and geek-chic fame they get, for the opportunity to be the key player in a project when perhaps they are more of a cog in their day job (and it can be a great way to up your perceived value to saavy employers). The fact that economic decisions are behind a lot of the success of Open Source software (do you think IBM supports Linux out of altruism?) doesn't make it less of a good or diminish the positive value it provides to the community. So there.
I bet something else inconsequential happened five years ago too. Maybe even three or four other totally useless events.
Come on, who cares when the label was "officially" coined? Six years ago I was using OSS, even though it wasn't "official" yet.
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
5 -- Number of companies in the entire world that have actually profitted off of "selling" software at no cost
4 -- Number of companies other than Microsoft that are still buying ads on Slashdot
3 -- Average ratio of troll to non-troll posts for the average Slashdotter
2 -- Number of projects on SourceForge that actually compile
1 -- Number of *BSD projects that are still alive. It's called Mac OS X.
Don't forget *nix either!
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Id say 20 years for Open Source... not 5.
Five years ago today a brainstorming session in Palo Alto led to the adoption and promotion of the "open source" label.
And thus began the constant complaint stream against Microsoft called "Slashdot"
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
... the correct term is "cracker" ...
-pyrrho
That doesn't make any sense, *BSD has been dying for far longer than 5 years!
Trolling is a art,
THIS ARTICLE IS SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO BE VIEWED BY ADULTS AND THEREFORE MAY BE UNSUITABLE FOR CHILDREN UNDER 17. THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS ONE OR MORE OF THE FOLLOWING: PROVOKING THOUGHTS (PT), EXPLICIT SARCASM (ES), OR CRUDE INDECENT SPELLING (S).
Do you make your own clothes?
In response to a recent comment of mine, a reader responded with the following: "as long as it is open source, and I have the code". And for the first time, I really understood what he was saying. I mean I had read this comment in one form or another all through slashdot for years, but had never, ever, really understood the underlying context.
I asked myself, why this fervent clutch on free, open, uncompiled software? I mean do you make your own clothes? Obviously, no matter where you shop, it's much cheaper to make your own clothes (excluding your time, which open source doesn't take into account anyway), so who here makes their own clothes? I certainly don't. Who here built their own car? Cars are definitely closed. It would definitely be cheaper to build your own, because labor is 60% of a car, remove marketing, factory costs, overhead, you could build probably a nice car for a few thousand dollars. Has anyone constructed their own car? We, as a society, accept closed source in 99.999 percent of our lives: drugs (the legal kind), mail, electricity, phone, highways, pornography (bad example).
But the point, my dear brother, is that we keep getting pushed back by the tide of commercialism shoved down our throats. We stand, naked, on the beach in a fierce winter rain, sleeting, and we shake an angry fist. That's the point of open source: "as long as I have the code". Damn right. So we grit our proverbial teeth, and shivering, we slowly take the heel of our foot and draw a line in the sand. We get on all fours, hunkered against the wind, like some Gollum clawing the earth, and make our way forward. Our anger keeps us warm. I'll listen to the music you choose, I'll take your word on what I should view, I'll read only your approved books, I'll pay double, I'll watch all the commercials, I'll carefully listen to all telemarketers, I'll read spam, but I will not, under any circumstances, give up the code which talks to my mouse.
So why stand firm on open source? I don't believe it's because of some great ideal set forth in the constitution. I don't believe because it's any better, really, than closed systems. I do believe, and I hope I get it right here, is that it's because we've had enough and it's the last vine in the jungle. Because maybe, just maybe, a struggle means there is hope. And hope is a good thing. Maybe it's the hope that someday I could design my own car, or house, or remove the need for a phone, or create my own expressions of art, business, passion, and provide some modicum of balance and power, but only "as long as I have the code". Fuckn'a right.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
The Open Source movement made it acceptable to an individual who wanted to give the source openly, but didn't want to give in to the propaganda of GNU/FSF.
Think I'm a troll, then ask yourself with such a wonderful model of GPL, why was Open Source neccessary?
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
5 years is great news. However, in order for opensource to become more than a gimmick for geeks like us, more companies will have to adopt it into the mainstream.
Brendan
The difference between Free Software (stallman) and Open Source (not stallman) should be noticed. While Free software is very much political, the term Open Source was created not long ago by those who didn't want the political label on the software.
We work in companies because they will pay us for doing what we love, and because we can create larger projects when we work together. We work on open source for many reasons that derive from this. Here are two. First, open source projects offer fewer restrictions than corporate ones. Second, open source projects are less likely to be killed for non-technical reasons, like projects at a company. In other words, our utility function is being maximized by participation in the process of creation. The economics of whether creation is funded or unfunded are a red herring.
-m
Taking the welfare of others may be a problem when one can not secure their own.
I've heard some people suggest programming is not a real occupation ie. hobby programmers are all we need, and others have reportly suggested programmers should wait tables to make a living while continuing to code in their free time.
I've noticed that funded open source projects do best, while unfunded projects usually don't usually become a force in their market. This goes for open-source and proprietory software equally.
altruism and open source should not be seen as the same thing. Some projects are started because the programmer had an alruistic motives, but unless that/those developer(s) have some source of funding/resources, it becomes very difficult to spend the 3+ hours it takes sometimes to get a decent size project of the ground.
Ask yourself can you, are you, spending that about of time serving the needs of others outside your family in anyway? Without anything in return?
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Five years ago today a brainstorming session in Palo Alto
The "open source" label itself came out of a strategy session held on February 3rd 1998 in Palo Alto, California.
Isn't it the fourth today?
That's all the high-complexity projects he feels are linux successes?
What about NetBeans, Apache, JBoss, Mozilla, PostGres and OpenOffice to name a few? All the applications that Linux worth using.
Yes, several of these have corporate investment, but still.
yeah, i kind of think that while OSS has only been actively promoted for five years, the concept has been put to use for far longer. (:
The wise follow a damned path, for to know is to be forsaken.
er. open source successes.
sorry.
yes, I'm fully aware the whole world doesn't revolve around linux. just a comment dashed off a little too quickly.
Call me cynic if you want, but I also believe many people contribute Open Source software because they don't want to be held accountable for what or how they do. Such is the Dark Side of the OSS offer.
If the recent Linux World Expo in new York is any example then the revolution is over and the Stallman's of the world have long since lost.
Reading Stallman's writings I come away with a sense that the ultimate over riding goal of the free software movement wasn't to see the code, or even to be able to share it with one another. It was to create a space in the software world where community could exist. Or to paraphrase Babylon 5...
The Gnu project was our last best hope for not being co-opted by business...
It failed.
Wandering the booths at expo it was astonishing to see a nearly endless series of suits all groping for the flavor of the week to sell to. The actual, "community", relegated to a small corner of the show floor off the beaten paths where they wouldn't scare financial analysts.
.I work for Microsoft. I have no problem with there being proprietary software, OSes, Apps, services etc etc. What does bother me is the wholesale co-option of our public spaces into corporate agendas. Such is the fate of Linux. Go to work for Redhat, or any other "open source company", and you will find you have to sign the same non-disclosure agreements and non-compete agreements as anywhere else in the industry. You will find you must censor yourself on public forums and avoid giving away the trade secrets of the new product.
It's not so much that I question the goal of making a buck, or even the observation that open source produces better software. What I question is the end result. Once again the best and brightest of the hacker community are locked up in the same corporate structures and goals that destroyed the AI lab community and Linux's agenda is being set in corporate boardrooms.
I have always thought of free software as being analogous to the Boston Commons. A small refuge away from the bottom line values of the rest of America. With the change of goals that open source represents it's as if we have invited the land developers into the commons. Sure a multiplex and a Starbucks are nice. But I miss the park.
> For some, it was a dark divergence from the free software movement;
+1
--Shemnon
"Next year we hope to show a profit!"
"Derp de derp."
Not only did you fail to read the article, you didn't even read past the title!
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
5th Anniversary of Open Source (tm)
I sure as hell don't remember anyone sticking a flag in it and saying "hey guys, we're here! This is where it starts..."
So, question: who has decided that open source suddenly has a start point and why? Did someone register it in 1998 or something?
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1990Dec4.1100 45.13335@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG
Information want to be Free.
Software is information.
So Free Software is the natural approach.
Nope, you are thinking of Free software.
I only wish there was a moderation "-1 Too Fucking Stupid To Read The Article"
Open Specifications and Open Documentation. There has to be an organization maintaining a list of specifications and documentation for hardware/software. Software tends to be better at this but I always hoped that product manufacturers would give out more specifications on their hardware instead of just assuming that their people can produce the best drivers. At the very least, it would allow for individuals to create new drivers for Operating Systems/Environments the company isn't providing drivers for.
I understand that some companies want to maintain a competetive edge but how about releasing documentation on hardware from their previous rev?
Plus a central repository for all of this information would be nice instead of looking at each company's site or going through dedicated external developer liasons.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
After reading the first few sentances of this article, it seemed to me that I remembered reading this some time ago. This article first appeared on /. on Dec 12, 2001.
5 22 9&mode=nested
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/10/184
"Microsoft has made computing accessible to a population who would otherwise not be able to use computers" - B. Kernigha
Now, at the end of that feel-good statement, I would like to add that communism got screwed up... open-source could be next..
"I see Windows users..."
Considering the lack of substance that your pstatements have behind them, I am going to give you the benefit of a doubt and assume that you meant this to be a joke, in an attempt to get a +5 funny mod. So here is some advice, next time keep it really short and down to a few points that are OBVIOUSLY joking. Using racism as a back bone for a joke is a pretty dangerous path to tread, reconsider it. Food for thought.
I really hope you're not serious though, that would be just plain sad and disgusting
In the lament:
"Linux, an operating system begun in 1991 in order to provide a free alternative to commercial UNIX systems, is the most prominent example. The second-most so is undoubtedly GNOME, a free graphical-user interface (GUI) for UNIX-compatible systems begun in 1996 to compete with the partly privately-owned K-Desktop Environment (KDE)."
Is GNOME really a bigger project than KDE? I always thought it was the other way around. Technical merits and flames aside, KDE got a year's head start and a toolkit on a platter, so it would be rather pathetic if it were behind GNOME. Can anyone confirm this?
You should really go back and do some more reading again then. It's quite simple really:
Your FUD about Red Hat or anyone else is meaningless because they release their software under the GPL which guarantees those freedoms. I'm not surprised that you're confused about this with all the talk of "Open Source", but don't worry, it's all really "Free Software" and there's nothing you can do about it.
This thread quickly made it's way into the "what is OSS really about?" One contributor put it nicely "Engineers like to create things". I think it goes beyond that. I mean, here are all us /.ers here, giving away our keen insight and wit -- for what? Why, of course, to be a part of a community.
That's all it really is... Humans are social animals (even those of us stereotyped as "antisocial") and we end up gathering in groups of folks getting together and doing stuff we like.
Cheers
Personally, I was annoyed to start but as it went it I started laughing my ass off."'sed' (shoot nEgroes dead)" How could ANYONE think that's serious?
When I first started looking around at the parallel universe of BSD, it was quite an interesting experience. In the Linux community, I was quite disgusted by the numerous commercial entities that used available code freely, but found ways to bypass the GPL when it came to their own innovation, as well as their attitude of "we distributors know better then you programmers."
Well, BSD doesn't attempt to force companies that use its code into open-sourcing it or providing it for free. Which means that those companies who do are the type you want on your side in the first place, because they *believe*.
By the way, to Anonymous Cowards waiting with baited breath to perform a repetitive action involving a certain Netcraft article: Try performing a repetitive action involving your genital areas instead. It's much more intellectually rewarding.
--
est modus in rebus
I was loading slackware on my 486 in 1994. When you see a good (right) thing you know it (or should if you aren't a rock).
And a comment on the 'Lament':
What a load of horsepucky. I build and release open source into the wild because, 1. I have something I want done that is not being done, or done well enough to satisfy my personal need, and 2. I have the hubris to think my solution may appeal to others, and so share. The writer of that article seems to think people are puppets of their desires, not knowing their true inner intentions. I also gathered that he is wearing some rose colored glasses when it comes to considering things outside of the realm of his own discourse.
I wouldn't pretend to know the complexity of any person's motivations, much less a whole community. He shouldn't either.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Considering the lack of substance that your pstatements have behind them
pstatements? POSIX Statements?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
> ...a lament about the decline of altruism in the
> open source community.
Don't worry. Some of us still aren't making any money from it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
You're what's wrong with comedy.
Stallman doesn't write "Open Source" software. He writes GNU/free GNU/software.
The cake is a pie
perhaps he should read ESR's "The magic cauldron" before he talks about how HTN and CATB dont hold up to real world economic analysis.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
IANAPSPWCFSDG [I am not a pear shaped pasty white clusterfart slashdot geek], but I think you didn't really read the story.
Why don't you just choose "Dissenting opinion"? Isn't all of this about freedom? I guess the complete sentence is "free to do whatever you want unless we disagree with it..."
There is a difference between 'Free Software' and the 'Free Software Movement'. The Open Source movement is just the subset of the Free Software movement devoid of the ideals and ethics of honesty and community that so many of us care about. It is entirely possible for an 'Open Source' company to behave as dishonestly and corruptly as Microsoft has done in the past. The same can not be said for a Free Software company as this implies an understanding and respect for the Free Software Movement.
On this "anniversary" of Open Source, we should be thinking about what has been accomplished and what needs to be done next. For instance, while the OS community has proven the value of providing open implementations, it is now time to start protecting and defending the community's right and ability to create those implmenations in the future. The best way to do this is to start pursuing "Open Ideas" or "Open Patents."
In recent years there has been an explosion of patents and patent applications by companies that seek to monopolize the exploitation of ideas and methods in software. With every patent granted, the scope of future OS projects is limited just a little bit more. Without going into flame wars about the patent system, I can say that there is something useful that we can do today to protect OS in the future.
A patent can be prevented if one can prove "prior art" exists that describes the method that the filer wishes to patent and, the USPTO accepts "Internet Publications" as prior art, using the "posted date" on messages as the date of priority. Thus, if people with good ideas document those ideas on the Web, from the instant that the description of a method is posted, then all future patents on that method are blocked forever unless the inventor can prove that they came up with the idea before the posting on the web. Thus, by adopting a discipline of identifying and posting ideas that others might try to patent, we can establish a collection of "Open Ideas" or "Open Patents" that block others from monopolizing the methods in the future.
It would also be useful for those in the OS community to become active in reviewing new patent applications as they are published by the USPTO every Thursday, and use the established procedures for "third party filing of prior art" to ensure that patent examiners don't issue patents on ideas that should remain Open.
Open Source isn't enough. We need Open Ideas to enable the Open Source of the future.
bob wyman
See: http://www.pubsub.org for more info.
Do anti-GPL folks sit around thinking up these things? What a bizarre point you just made!
Let me get this straight: The BSD license doesn't "force" companies to release their code, therefore you can spot the "believers" by the ones who release the code voluntarily? And who are these companies, by the way? Apple? Do you also have a list of BSD-using companies that DON'T release the source, so we can compare?
The point is not to play "spot the happy fun companies", the point is to make your life and job easier and better by having lots of free software available.
Good point! So many of the haters on slashdot seem to forget that Free software is NOT Richard Stallman, it's NOT the GPL, it's NOT copyleft.
The BSD license is Free.
The MIT license is Free.
The GPL is Free.
Putting your code in the public domain makes it Free.
It's unfortunate that the Free/Open software community engages in the petty, irrelevant bickering that brings down so many "intellectual movements". It's the same thinking that gives us 500 different versions of Christianity, when to a non-Christian they all seem exactly the same.
I hope we can all just focus on these simple ideals for software, to make our lives and jobs easier and better. I wish the software I bought had all these freedoms.
Hell, I wish most of it had JUST ONE of these freedoms! Does it really matter how you can re-distribute modified copies, when other software exists that doesn't even let you USE IT, without accepting a CONTRACT??
No. You had it right in the previous sentence:
Somebody who paints, but cares not how what they paint looks, and only cares about the money is not an artist, even though they may call themselves an artist.
Somebody who designs things, but cares not how their designs work, and only cares about the money is not an engineer, even though they may call themselves an engineer.
Engineering is a calling - you either are called or you are not. If you are not called, if you are not driven to design, to create, then you are not an engineer no matter what you would label yourself.
Just as true artists create their art even if they are not paid for it, true engineers create their art even if they are not paid for it.
Free Software is just one expression of this. The geek who helps you wire your house for (sound|Ethernet), the guy who helps you fix your car free of charge, the guy who gives you tips on how to mitre a doorframe at Home Depot are other expressions of this.
Ben Franklin gave away the design of his stove. George Washington Carver would give you full plans for any of his inventions for the cost of a self-addressed stamped envelope. They were engineers.
www.eFax.com are spammers
This was coined in 1993 by Thomas McWilliams in a thread on comp.os.linux entitled "What would people think of binary-only software on Linux?"
To wit:
"The GPL and the open source code have made Linux the success that it is." -- Thomas McWilliams
Wandering the booths at expo..
Ha ha ha! The joke is on you. You see, you weren't in the REAL WORLD. Expo?! WTF is that? Is that some hacker's handle? if not, then it wasn't real.
the point is to make your life and job easier and better by having lots of free software available.
The point I was trying to make was that the original goal of the Free Software movement wasn't, "to make your life and job easier", but was instead to endeavor to recreate a social space that was destroyed when industry co-opted the hackers of the media lab.
The point being that by changing the goal to making your life and job easier inherently results in being co-opted by business interests and in the end produces the same effect on the hacker culture.
My Birthday is the day that "Opensource" was born
Was it fixed for Gnome 2.2? If so, are there screenshots? If not, why not? If so, when was it? If not, will there be one for 2.4?
So calling it "open source" and not "free" mainstreamed "free" software? I get it.
If there was a troll hall of fame, you would be in it...
Go to the adequacy archive if you want to see where that piece was plagiarized from. Unless it was actually the original author, which is actually highly likely. In any case it isn't remotely original.
Which means that those companies who do are the type you want on your side in the first place, because they *believe*.
Bunk. It means no such thing. It could equally well mean that they have no moral compunctions about hooking people with a bait and switch.
Of course the OSS and FS movements are lilly white. Black people want to pull themselves out of poverty.
Yes. This is a reply to a troll, but I'm serious. Black people already have the NCAA and other sporting organizations pimping them out and getting rich. They don't need another system like that.
I wear Open Source Clothes, but they have no zippers or buttons. Just frog-type fasteners because the people that make the OSC believe that's the "best" fastener.
Of course I have access to needles, thread, a copper smelter, and various machine tools which give me the wonderful freedom to spend days fabricating a zipper for my Open Source jeans. I also make contributions to the Open Source Zipper project which has promised that they will have enough funds to purchase a zipper-matic manufacturing system in a few years.
Nevermind the fact that we don't drive the kids to soccer practice or eat out anymore. The time we spend cutting patterns has made us a stronger family even if my youngest boy has declared "Dad you're an idiot, I hate you, and the first thing I do when I leave home is shop at the Gap".
I wouldn't be caught dead at the Gap. Those families go there "enjoying" themselves and "saving time". If only they knew what slaves they are. I'd say more, but there's weaving to attend to, and I have to hit my daughter with the strap to make her do it because she can be so insolent at times.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Karma whoring advice from a newbie who posts at an AC score?
It isn't alive now!
I'm a Randite so I can't resist....
If you like your philosophy lessons short and to the point, I suggest "The Virtue of Selfishness".
If you'd rather have a plot, I'd suggest either "The Fountainhead" or "Atlas Shrugged".
The problem with "Altruism" is determining in whose interest you should act in. Lots of people will perform feats of logical prestidigitation to demonstrate how acting in their interest or in their favorite victim's interst is the most beneficial form of altruism. I contribute to free software because it is IN MY OWN SELFISH BEST INTEREST. I have no delusions about my motivations. I get a better product at a lower price and I learn something in exchange for doing something that I enjoy.
(So there)
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I suggest you should look around a bit:
There are people who make there own clothes.
There are people who build up a new car from a wreck.
There are people who do there own tv shows (maybe not in the U.S., but at least where I come from).
There are people who build there own house (not have it built).
They are not many, but nevertheless there are some.
Not everyone who uses a computer wants to have the source. It's only a small fraction, those who are interested in programming. And like this, for any other activity there are a few people who want to do it on their own, and these people, too, fight for the things they need to do it.
I'll have you know thats GNU/G GNU/N GNU/U GNU/S GNU/o GNU/f GNU/t GNU/w GNU/a GNU/r GNU/e!
GNU/R GNU/M GNU/S
The Gnu project was our last best hope for not being co-opted by business... It failed.
Come on, this is nothing new. I visited LinuxTag in 2000 and noticed that even then, most companies viewed GNU/Linux as just another platform for which they can sell proprietary software. There wasn't much talk about GNU, the GPL, or Free Software outside the Free Software Ghetto.
Fortunately, all this didn't dilute the GNU or Free Software label. "Open Source" can be applied to everything which runs on a UNIX-like operating system, irrespective of license and geek factor. I'm sure we'll never see a GNU Award for Free Software Excellence given to e.g. WebSphere, unless WebSphere is actually Free Software.
Of course, the initial momentum of the Linux and Open Source movements has mostly ended in the corporate graveyard. But I doubt that it's harder to work on Free Software for a living than it was at the beginning of 90s, so it's probably not a big deal.