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The Care and Feeding of Open Source Software
An anonymous reader writes "You might find The Care and Feeding of FOSS (Free Open Source Software) interesting. This article debunks a lot of the myths and misunderstandings about the open-source software development process."
history is inevitable.
"the FOSS era is inevitable for operating systems."
if we look at this historically, isn't Microsoft already dead?
certainly this article makes it clear that Linux may well enter a stage where it is an accepted standard, and has crushed the previous groups.
in a way, isn't that what Microsoft already did? they were once the upstart defeating the giants of IBM and Apple. history repeats itself.
I certainly don't think we'll see the death of MS for decades, if ever, but we may just see them seriously reduced
this article certainly provides a good explanation for that, in my opinion anyway - it seems pretty clear cut. perhaps someone can refute that?
i'd be interested to hear ideas...
Joseph Farthing
http://josephfarthing.com
But I dont think FOSS goes further than step 4. Its already apparent from the server OS market. FOSS is never going to completely dominate. Its main effect is to take out all the small/medium players and polarize the market into FOSS and the commercial giants which is unfortunate because the smaller commercial endeavours are where (as far as I can see) most of the innovation tends to come from. FOSS also tends to lag behind the technology curve so by the time it starts to mature the market has moved on, creating new options for commercial software so FOSS will constantly be chasing a moving target.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
So far, I haven't been contributing to open source because it takes a lot of work to make something "production" quality. Now I'm leaning toward putting out the stuff in pre-beta and making the beneficiaries pay to bring it up to production release quality. You want it, you pay for it.
Some current Stage 5 situation: (FOSS community begins to slowly but inexorably erode the technical lead held by the commercial offerings)
WS_FTP --> Filezilla
Winzip --> 7-zip
I'd be interested in seeing what factors it takes to push the above into Stage 6 (FOSS version dominates).
Let's take a current project. GIMP, for instance. A viable competitor/alternative to PaintshopPro (not Photoshop). Where could the GIMP today be if there could be a dedicated team of fulltime developers? i.e. people getting paid to create and update GIMP, and nothing more.
One of the reasons GIMP is gaining popularity is because it is free as in beer. Not because it is an especially 'good' or easy to use tool, but it costs nothing to use. (Don't get me wrong, GIMP is fantastic at what it does and how it was built). Most people don't actually care about the philosophy behind FOSS. GPL? Whazzat?
For a tool such as GIMP, selling hardware, support, and installation doesn't work. Those income generators work at the corporate level, not the personal level. So how could the GIMP team get paid for producing GIMP (or similar level tools/programs)? Is it possible to do?
How many FOSS tools could move off the '0.0.2 alpha' stage if there was a team of fulltime developers that could also actually eat while doing it?
FOSS existed WAY before commercial softaware existed. the FIRST computers were FOSS.
it was greedy asshat's like Gates and company that turned free and open source into a dirty secret.
and the closed source thing was not common until the mid 80's I remember getting my very first IBM-PC and it came with the sourcecode to the bios in the back of the manual.
FOSS is simply taking back what was the norm for computing when it started. it's not bored people, it's people that know what is right and are doing what is right.
Closed source is NOT RIGHT.
``This is exactly how any software company works. How often do you think the actual programmer keeps the rights to the software that they write when working for a company?''
Ah, I see. What you missed is that I develop software for customers, not employers. This means I retain the copyright. In addition to that, I grant the customer full rights to the code as well.
The difference between that and working for them is that I can use the same software in another project. This reduces development time and boredom on my part, and therefore costs on the customers' part.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"In another, I paid a similar amounts for both a Unix System V licence and for Emacs."
You paid money for Emacs?
Do you know if RMS got any of that?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The real benefit of free software is being able to chose what you want. I can think of a few places that are likely to have real innovation but I'm loath to offer specifics because some obscure package someplace may very well offer it. It's not like people can't very easily make their own version of any free program and sell it. The development problem will be making it as good as the free program when your resources are so relatively limited. The user's problem, aside from quality, lack of freedom and peer check, is getting all the pieces in the same place. It may be possible to assemble all of the commercial programs to get what you want, but the result will not be as good and it will cost you lots of research, money and pain when the parts don't play well. There's nothing like being able to apt-get what you want and just knowind it's going to work as advertised.
The people at OpenBSD have lots to offer for secure systems. They have developed algorithms and systems that are indeed innovative. Can you name a commercial system that has all of the features of OpenBSD? Bastile Linux?
GNU has loads of great stuff. Everyone uses their compiler. Can you name a commercial compiler that has been ported so so many platforms?
When you step back, there are innumerable small details that make free software so polished relative to commercial software. Other details are small but annoying. When using Solaris, I really miss -h and other conveniences such as transparent X forwarding through OpenSSH. Does even Exceed have transparent X forwarding through ssh in their excellent Windoze products yet? There are few interfaces that can compete with Gnome and KDE. Winblows is completely outclassed and Mac OSX is pretty but has far fewer features. KDE's beauty rivals anything. Is there a file manager as excellent and Konqueror anywhere in the commercial world?
You might find any and all of the things I mentioned in the commercial world, but you won't find them all in the same place. Free software gives you what you want, or the tools to get it done.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
IIRC, Emacs was around in it's ancestral form long before RMS started the GNU project. It was a collection of macros that fit on top of a particular editor, which was, as I recall, collated by RMS and others. There were commercial versions of this, or at least free-as-in-beer-you-pay-for.
When RMS decided to start GNU, the first thing he did was a complete rewrite of Emacs based on the earlier versions. This was licensed under the predecessor of the GPL, the Emacs Public License (or something like that.)
Again, this is working from memory, so don't trust the details, but I think this might explain where Emacs fits into the Free Software scheme of things. Please, anyone, feel free to correct me!
Cogito, ergo sig.