Slashdot Mirror
Why Open Source Doesn't Interoperate
bergie writes "There is an interesting article on Advogato on why it is so difficult for Open Source projects to interoperate or support common standards. Often cultural differences between projects, egoes, and many other issues stand in the way. The article outlines some practical ways for improving the situation, based on experiences from OSCOM efforts to get support WebDAV, SlideML and other standards into Open Source CMSs. Examples of successful interop projects include freedesktop.org, the cooperative effort between GNOME and KDE."
Open Source just doesn't work, and never will. That's just how it is, there isn't any control or any integration.
OpenOffice + KDE + XFree86** != Productive Desktop Environemnt (for example).
The only times things do work is when they are centrally controlled, but that defeats the ideals of Open Source (Like Microsoft and Windows XP, well integrated).
**Excellent example of how Open Source doesn't work... on that note - You can't have a usuable desktop with XFree86 anyway.
...that open source authors prefer solutions they like over "standard" solutions.
Industry standards, particularly those created by committees, are often abominations that people only use if they have to. In my experience, the extent to which people like things like CORBA and XML often seems to be inversely proportional to their level of technical sophistication.
RFCs have much more respect in open source circles than committee-created standards.
Unfortunatly a lot of code writing is done with inadequate planning, but this is an inherant problem. Without a crystal ball you cannot predict every twist and turn you will face. :)
This is not just a problem with free, Free or open source software, but also with planned, structured development of commerical model software such as Windows.
After all if we could predict the future why would ever need new versions?
However I don't think that a neatly integrated environment is impossible, just difficult.
Besides, getting around integration issues is part of the fun!
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
Yes, but VNC is a much more niche market though. And it is a lot simpler standard.
All of the other projects are based directly on a historical product - VNC, whereas with these projects they can be developed alongside or before other projects, and have much wider scope.
And there's a good reson why you can't change your posts - can you imagine the havoc when someone decides to change their +5 Interesting post to read 'First Post!'.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
One of the biggest problems I see with Free Software development is the problem of the blindered developer.
This is the guy who doesn't bother to raise his head from the computer to look at how his project works in any environment other than *his* system. You know, the guy who requires you to have libfoo.so.5.1.2.pl6-thursday-0741am-fred-mutant1 installed just to compile his code, and by $deity no other version of the library will work.
A concrete example: The developer of the GATOS project (a driver for the TV tuner/video capture (but not video out) functions of ATI All-in-Wonder cards) requires you to use HIS kernel module and HIS radeon driver. As a result, you may EITHER use his code XOR the DRI accelerated 3d code, but not both.
True, he does (to an extent) track the DRI development, but rather than working with DRI and XFree and coming up with a way his drivers can play nice with the standard builds (e.g. having hooks in the standard driver and having the standard driver load his modules if present) he is off on his own little branch.
He also uses libraries and packages that are not part of the standard installs of common distros - as a result just getting his code working is a real slog. So many people don't do it, and his project does not get as much support as it might.
Now, I am not picking on him - developing stuff like that is hard, since it is very poorly documented. And with DRI making changes, XFree making changes, and him making changes, you WILL have times when things don't play well together. But rather than that being a transient state of affairs it is the normal state the GATOS project w.r.t. DRI.
Unfortunately, it take time and work to stop, get a fresh install of RedHat/SUSE/Gentoo/... and see what it takes to get your code to build and install. It takes work to make sure that you really NEED the latest version of libfoo, rather than just any version. Especially when your code interoperates tightly with other people's projects it is difficult to plan interfaces that won't change frequently. If you can accept help from others this isn't so bad, but many project "leaders" have the attitude of "HOW DARE YOU IMPUNE MY PROJECT! IT IS PERFECT UNTO ITSELF! I CANNOT HELP IT IF YOU ARE NOT 31337 ENOUGH TO HAVE THE LATEST STUFF! L@M3Rz! IT IS UNDER DEVELOPMENT!"
But that is the difference between a hack and a software engineer - just "getting something to work" and "getting something to work well, under as many circumstances as possible, as smoothly as possible."
www.eFax.com are spammers
Lack of apparent interest from vendors is also somewhat discouraging. There are quite a few specs up on freedesktop.org that are only implemented by GNOME, with KDE "pending". Then for instance Mosfet comes along and claims the thumbnail spec is stupid for reasons x, y and z and proceeds to invent his own (the so-called "professional" thumbnail spec) and ask for it to replace the existing one! Not exactly encouraging.
Your subject line says it all. Well, nearly...
I'd say the two biggest sins of the open-sourcers are
a) over-generalisation (it'll be able to do everything)
and
b) over-specialisation (it does one task, but can't do similar ones)
I'm finding it hard to think of examples, but I guess GNU grep's an OK example of something that's just about right.
Expanded to do enough things like context greps (e.g. give me 4 lines before the line containing "Name:" and 1 line after), and a few other features (e.g. '-c' so that you don't need to '|wc-l') that add to its functionality, so it isn't over-specialised. Likewise, it's not sed, awk or perl, they realised that just keeping it simple and lightweight was the way to maximise its usefulness.
YAW.
Your head of state is a corrupt weasel, I hope you're happy.
Interoperation means passing data between two different programs over some common bridge. This means typically writing some sort of connector code. In the best case, someone is able to bundle that connector cod into a library.
Consider coding to a web service interface such as SOAP vs. just keeping your application within one programming language and using its built-in constructs for passing data. With the web service, you either have to marshal into and out of SOAP envelopes on your own or use a library. However, not all libraries themselves interoperate. Hence, you have to test for compatibility by running against a suite of other implementations, all of which are also supposedly standard. It's the browser wars all over again. If you don't bother with interconnectivity, the job is over more quickly.
To get an interoperability standard that you can just code to seems to take the developer community years of effort. Yes, there is value to interoperability, and that is why people do actually undertake things like web services projects and spend years trying to develop standards. But for a first project, or even a mature, successfully functioning product, interoperability is not likely to be a first instinct.
You might as well ask why doesn't closed source software interoperate.
In a perfect world everyone would write software that works together. One shouldn't only look at getting open source software to support a common standard, we should try getting everyone to support common standards.
It's not my expirience that getting open source software is all that hard. Getting non open source stuff to work with anything is hard. Closed standards is want gets in the way of interoperability. With open source you always have the option of adding the features you need. If two open source applications can benefit from working together, it will be implemented by someone who needs it. The original authors might not always see the need for a given feature.
I don't see it as a problem in the open source community. It's fare worse is commercial closed source software.
Interoperability relies on standards that come from standards bodies. As long as the software conforms to those standards and works correctly, it interoperates. Interoperability with standards requires less planning on the part of the programmer because the standards have already been written by other people.
Often no planning is done and developers start writing their code without a clear vision of what they want to write.
Good. More software projects should start off with that kind of openness and willingness to adapt to changing circumstances.
Even Linus is against the creation of standard interfaces internal to the Linux kernel. That decision inhibits the creation of a truly modular system.
That part I fully agree with. But it has nothing much to do with "interoperability" because it is an issue within a single project.
Also, Linus's stance is unreasonable: it is quite possible to define interfaces and yet to maintain the same flexibility that exists in Linux. The problems of the Linux kernel with modularity are cultural problems; technically and managerially, they are solvable if people wanted to solve them.
The real reason, I believe, has to do with the fundemantal drive behind an open-source project -- find an itch, then scratch it. OSS projects (in general) start because someone sees a specific need or want for software that performs a specific purpose. By its very nature, that project is looking at the world in a bottom-up fashion -- and that inevitably pushes interoperability off until "later".
Integration or interoperability is typicaly an "add-on" to an already successful project -- no one really starts thinking about "well, I'd love to be able to do X from program Y" until both projects X and Y have developed strong user bases. It's sort of a natural selection in software -- the "best" projects survive and eventually breed (interoperate) with other projects to evolve higher-order software.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I've been known to be wrong... though of course, those who discover that have been known to disappear...
For the sake of discussion, here's what I think.
The reason I'm seriously contemplating switching to OS X is because they have shareware that is worth paying for. I don't mind spending $10 on a nice editor or a utility that saves me some time.
On linux, there are a lot of diamonds in the rough in terms of software, but majority is... well, incomplete. I can't complain, because it's free, and because who am I to say how people are to spend their time?
What is true, however, is that there is no motivation for a hobbyist to follow standards if he doesn't want to. If however, there is at least a $5-$20 contribution from the users, then there is at least some weight to the user's request. An honor code if you will.
Simply put, I'm starting to see where shareware might fit in this world, and it's basically a way to transition a hobbyist project to something more mature and useable.
-Nikita.
I've read a lot of comments here, with some interesting points, excuses, or disagreements on the premise that OSS doesn't support standards.
/bin/sh. WHY???!!!!
/bin/sh-like shell that I can't `echo "hi!"` in????
:-), consider my question closely. sh, ksh, zsh, ash, and every other shell that uses sh syntax (i.e. not the csh variants) deals with the above statement in the same way. Bash doesn't.
Bash supposedly conforms to Posix standards if you invoke it with the --posix flag. (Why it shouldn't default to posix-compliant I don't know) However, bash is not compatible with
Will someone tell me why bash is the ONLY
In case anyone things I'm just ranting (I probably am ranting, but that's not all there is here
Why would OSS deliberately develop a shell (the default universal Linux shell no less) that breaks such a fundamental and long-standing de facto standard?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I had been doing an open source project recently for the past few months. I never really attracted any users. I only know of one person who got it to compile and work.
What really perplexes me are the projects which have managed to get people interview them and discuss the project, and yet after 3 years they still have not released anything.
Or those projects that existed for about 10 blips of a microsecond, got lots of hype and coverage, but you can not get them anymore. They are gone.
I at least did what I said I was going to do and it works. Maybe it doesn't look pretty (there is no such thing as an Open Source Artist people). Maybe it is hard to use (WTF do you expect for free? Blood?). Maybe it's a total hack job. But I did it and at least I can walk away from you all feeling doped out buku-good.
The problem is you people expect this stuff to rival professional software on Windows, and yet maybe 1% of you actually understand it is hard work and takes alot of time. Most of us are not getting paid to do this. And when you get cold shouldered, ignored, and flamed by morons about how the program sucks, it doesn't help very much.
I will continue to work on Open Source but I am not trying to impress people nor do I care whether they use it or not. It is open because I know that someone out there might be able to benefit from it who can't afford the pro stuff, and appreicate it, and for that one person, that is who I am working for.
Whatever projects I find useful I always write to the developer and say thanks. Why? Because I've been in there shoes. 99% of them are doing it for free. They do it because they want to do it. They do it because they love it. That is why I do it. That is why I will keep helping Open Source projects, and making more code.
Until you actually have to work hard for what you have you will never appreciate what you have.
The reason Open Source is so diverse and uninteroperable is because it encapsulates the spirit of the whole movement to begin with. It began as the pet project of a bunch of people who wanted to hack on code. They do it because they like doing it. Now it's a clique thing where it's cool to be a part of it. When it first started (and I've been in and out of this scene for 8 years now) nobody knew what open source was about. Linux? What the fuck is a linux?
The system was funky ass and I remember blowing up my monitor trying to get X-windows to work. Yeah it was not anything like what distributions are like now.
The reason the state of Open source is not rivaling the stuff on Windows is because 99% of you expect it but don't want to put the hard work into making it happen.
The Spirit of Open Source is the lone hacker against the system. Hacker's hate standards. They hate coding conventions. They hate shit that is closed and they can't tweak the code. They hate whiney users who are to lazy to figure out how to work shit and won't type man. The whole spirit of it is to make people get off their lazy ass and dig into things and find out how they work. It's not and never will be a plug-n-play system where everyone gets along and everyone speaks the same language and looks the same. It isn't going to happen. It goes against the whole philosophy of what the system is about: being free, rebelling against the corporate bullshit that chains you down and makes everyone write code the same way.
If Linux becomes some standardized, plug-n-play, corporate system, I will find some other operating system to use and be a part of. I come to Linux specifically to get away from that very shit.
I like Linux not because I think it's user friendly but because the people making things are Linux are truly innovative, and yes, it is much harder to get working than Windows, but it's worth it, because it is far more flexible and configurable. But it takes work to figure the stuff out.
I'm not against people taking the system and using it to make money with, or making distributions that do all this stuff for