Slashdot Mirror
What is Open Source?
s390 writes "The Inquirer is running an article by Olliance about "What is Open Source?" It appears to be the first of a two-part series for managers about how to engage with the open source community. The writers seem to know their material. Are they on target or have they missed something important? Do PHBs really need to read this sort of introduction to get comfortable with the idea of using Linux and other open source software?"
they should ask SCO ?
It's like the saying goes; when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like it needs a pounding. Nobody ever got fired buying Microsoft, whereas Open Source seems like a gamble... even moreso now with the bogus SCO lawsuit. Calmly and rationally explaining to the people that make the procurement decisions at your company that free software is a valid alternative and explaining why is necessary, because by default they're going to want to go with what they've always went with.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
As a someone who is relatively new to /., the 'geek scene', and alternative software, I'd just like to point out to many people I don't think that OSS is a very simple, obvious concept. I haven't finished reading the article yet, but I think the idea of explaining OSS simply to 'non-geek' people is a good one, considering the "if you don't know what it is, figure it out yourself, we're not pandering to anyone" attitudes I've seen every once in awhile. Well, off to finish reading...
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
What is Open Source?
Open Source is patient. Open Source is kind. It does not envy.
It does not boast, it is not proud
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered
It keeps no record of wrongs
Open Source does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres
slashdot!=valid HTML
The author assumes some things. High Quality? Some software is. OpenSSH for starters. However, anyone who's spent some time installing packages on various GNU or BSD systems knows there are some really awful projects out there too.
Now that I think about it though, thanks to the Java version of ICQ, I think closed source still holds the worst app of all time record...
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
While I read slashdot daily, and have an appreciation for Open Source software, I think a lot of you miss the point. I work for a company that builds 3D simulations. For years we used IRIX. SGI was simply the best graphics rendering stations you could buy. We still have some fridge sized boxes, an old Octane, and a couple O2s sitting around.
However, we've moved to Linux. We use Red Hat 7.2. Why? Because Open Source is great? Beacause we're giving back to the community? No. Because Linux allowed us to reuse all our simulation code that was built using Unix interoperabilty on more modern hardware, cheaper. We can go grab a GeForce4 Ti 4600 off the shelf, get a 8MB Buffered IDE HD, and Dual Athlon chips and they'll eat those O2s / Octanes, and even the old fridge sized Onyx. Slap six of them together and you've got a six channel renderer. We did have to change our IG software. We were using Performer, now we use a third party developed renderer.
For years our the company that developed our renderer has supported both Linux and Windows. Now they only support rendering on Windows. They still support the API for Linux though. So now we're looking three options:
1) Devoting time to developing our own Linux based renderer.
2) Continuing to use their API on Linux, but to control chanels on Windows boxes.
3) Converting the simulation over to Windows and dropping Linux.
At this point option 1 is pretty much out. While we have the in house skills to develop an IG, it would take several years to build something to meet our requirements (needs texture paging, terrain paging, must handle terrain sizes in excess of 2GB, etc).
Option 2 looks attractive because it's the least work. And will probably be what's implemented in the short run.
Option 3 will probably be our long run solution as we've had some trouble with nVidia and ATI drivers on Linux. While they do work in most cases, they don't seem quite as robust as their Windows counterparts. Ie with the Quadro cards...
Now if you go back and read over these things, what we considered in deciding what to use were:
1) time
2) cost
3) ease of implementation
You'll note we never said anything about Open Source. When we first moved to Linux we looked at Open Source issues. We use open source development tools. GCC, GIMP, ImageMagick, Glade... But it had nothing to do with the fact they were open source. If they had been sold to us like IRIX was and performed the same functionality we would have bought them.
We're interested in shipping our product, making $$$, and that's what managers are concerned with. The debate over whether or not we use Open Source software is irrelevent. The questions that have to be answered are how it would impact cost, time to delivery, learning curve. The other thing is, you shouldn't expect businesses to go out and just switch to Open Source because you wrote a persuasive article. If there is a system in place, it probably won't be replaced until it's necessary to do so. It's that whole cost thing again. Why replace something that's been paid for that works until it's necesary to do so.
If you answer that with anything other than it will make the company more $$$, or increase productivity, etc... you won't get very far with the suits.
A theory formulated by people who came to age trying to screw universities out of what they considered their own personal property, which was then somehow extrapolated to the real world and subsequently swallowed in extremis by a few technically capable idealists and several million people looking for a free ride who contribute absolutely nothing but "believe" and therefore are part of the "community".
The resulting movement (and its derivatives) can be thought of as the technological version of the catholic church during the depth of the medieval era - in both structure and radical "join us or die" behavior.
Along the way they convince themselves that "some day" they'll make a buck on giving away stuff, and when they don't (which is the most common result), they blame the government, the system, the corporations and the weather for being "unfair".
Basically.
Only some of the time. One big problem with open source software is that there's only so much attention to go around. High-profile projects like the Linux kernel and Apache get that attention. But once you get past the top 25 projects or so, attention is limited and quality becomes spotty.
The biggest problem is mid-level open source software that's useful but contains some major design error. It's almost impossible to fix such things. Those projects don't get the attention needed for a major rewrite, and the "patch" approach doesn't generate a redesign.
CVS is a good example of this. It's a basically good idea, implemented badly. CVS is a client/server system with a database back end. But the client/server system is ad-hoc, as is the database system. CVS clients look for specific text messages coming back from the server; there's no proper client/server protocol, not even error codes. The "database system" is just a collection of data files, lock files, and status files, which can get out of sync.
"Subversion" was written to deal with these issues. When it's done, it will do about what CVS does, but hopefully better. That indicates a failure of the patch-based open source process. CVS couldn't be fixed within the process; it was necessary to start a new project and rewrite.
Below the projects that are marginally successful is the dark underside of open source, the thousands of dead and moribund projects on SourceForge. The SourceForge people like to boast about how many projects they have, but for most of them, they're just providing free hosting for trash.
Sometimes what is most obvious to one person is most unobvious to another. OSS is - to Slashdotters - as obvious as water and sun. To managers, it is a contradictory concept and much of the education has to come in the form of explaining why it is "free". Much of the counter arguments to OSS try to leverage the natural paranoia of business people (GPL virus, OSS patent liability, TCO, etc. etc.).
The simple truth - and this is obvious to any neutral observer - is that the Internet changed the dynamics of the software industry by removing all the previous barriers to organization and communication. What used to require a large organization to produce can now be economically (and this is the key) produced by random professionals in their spare time, by tiny teams working on thin margins, and by organizations who would otherwise do nothing special with the code anyhow.
The key questions about OSS ("who pays?") have been asked before, about the Internet, and we now all know the answers: everyone pays, a little, but since the technology required is so very, very cheap, it comes down to rewarding people's time. And it so happens that for many developers, the product is its own reward.
Software only represents a slice of any business's operation, and whether OSS is free or cheap makes little difference. However, when software is expensive (think SAP or Oracle), it eats so deeply into the business that little is left for other investment.
Managers need first to learn that large swathes of the software landscape are now completely in the domain of "as cheap as air", and only foolish people will still pay for something that their competitors get for nothing.
Managers need secondly to learn that this process keeps on moving. One by one the bastions of commercial software will become commodity items. The businesses with the capacity to be pioneers will always benefit. The rest will follow when the technology curve flattens out and moves into the "general market" and then "late adopter" phase.
OSS is simply a slice of a standard S-shaped technology curve. It's the same curve that drives Moore's Law, and indeed, one can say that software cost has a half-life. One could even estimate this. Allow me to state "Heironymous' Law" of falling software costs: every 18 months, software products fall in cost by half, eventually reaching effective zero.
Which is why we can now get databases, office suites, Beowulf clustering software, etc. etc. etc. for the cost of bandwidth.
Patents, by the way, are a brake on this technology curve, and this is IMHO why those of us who love and feel this curve hate patents so much. Technology wants to be free.
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