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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."
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 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.
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"
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
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.
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.
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.
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
> ...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.
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.