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Unsung Heroes of Open Source

Posted by Zonk on from the working-to-support-industry,-commerce,-and-the-american-way! dept.

Yosef writes "Jon Udell uses his experience from using and hacking the free software BitPim to say that developers of such less-known projects are the true heroes of open source: 'For solving a host of vexing problems with quiet competence, and for doing it in ways that invite others to stand on their shoulders, I salute them all.'"

3 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Heroes??!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I'm sorry, but I think the word hero is just too strong a word in this case. These guys are just writing some code, that nobody noticed until this writer.

    No, the real heroes are police, firefighters, and the soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. Real heroes put their lives on the line every day for the rest of us. Guys typing on the computer all day do not qualify as heroes in my eyes.

    1. Re:Heroes??!! by nietsch · · Score: 0, Troll

      I didn't notice the troll rating until i hit reply. Since I have this bucket of bile waiting i'll respond anyway:

      police and firemen i have no objections to, but praising soldiers as hero's goes way too far.

      Why would some dumbass that could not find a proper job, singns up for the money and gets blown up in a country that his president needed invaded be a hero? To me he still is a dumbass that deserved what he signed for.

      Offcourse a software developed pales in comparison to someone that risks his own life out of altruism to save that of an unrelated person. But the world does not need every person to be a hero. Hero's are very sparse, and for a good reason: You don't want the situations that define/make a hero happen all the time.

      Yes, I am anti-american and I don't support any war whatsoever. If you mod me down for that you just show the sorry state your country is in.

      --
      This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
  2. Linux is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Yet another sickening blow has struck what's left of the Linux community, as a soon-to-be-released report by the independent Commision for Technology Management (CTM) after a year-long study has concluded: Linux is already dead. Here are some of the commission's findings:

    Fact: Linux has balkanized yet again. There are now no less than 120 separate, competing Linux distros, each of which has introduced fundamental incompatibilities with the other distros, and frequently with Unix standards. Average number of developers in each project (except for Redhat and Novell/Suse): fewer than five. Average number of users per project: there are no definitive numbers, but reports show that all projects are on the decline.

    Fact: Trivial issues such as names continue to plague Linux. At a recent Linux conference in San Francisco, a fight broke out between RMS (Richard M. Stallman) who says Linux should be called GNU/Linux and Linus Torvalds who says Linux should be called Linux. This led to a massive barroom style brawl involving at least 150 Linux geeks. The SFPD was called out to break up the melee, and arrested 150 people. It was estimated that at least 2 to 3 times that many were involved in the brawl, but there wasn't enough police on hand to arrest all of them. Thirty one people were hospitalized as a result of this brawl, and one person is still in a coma.

    Fact: There are almost no Connectiva developers left, and its use, according to Netcraft, is down to a sadly crippled .005% of internet servers. This led to Mandrakesoft, makers of another troubled distro, to purchase Connectiva. However, industry anaylists say that this will not help since Mandrakesoft is already a shell of its former self.

    Fact: X.org will not include support Redhat's Fedora project. The newly formed group believes that Fedora has strayed too far from Unix standards and have become too difficult to support along with other Linux distros and Solaris x86. "It's too much trouble," said one anonymous developer. "If they want to make their own standards, let them doing the porting for us."

    Fact: Ubuntu Linux, yet another offshoot of the beleaguered Debian "distro", is already collapsing under the weight of internal power struggles and in-fighting. "They haven't done a single decent release," notes Mark Baron, an industry watcher and columnist. "Their mailing lists read like an online version of a Jerry Springer episode, complete with food fights, swearing, name-calling, and chair-throwing." Netcraft reports that Ubuntu Linux is run on exactly 0% of internet servers.

    Fact: Debian Linux, which claims to focus on "being free" (whatever that is supposed to mean), is slow, and cannot take advantage of multiple CPUs. "That about drove the last nail in the coffin for Linux use here," said Michael Curry, CTO of Amazon.com. "We took our Debian boxes out to the backyard and shot them in the head. We're much happier running FreeBSD."

    Fact: Servers running SELinux, which claims to focus on security, are frequently compromised. According to Jim Markham, editor of the online security forum SecurityWatch, the few SELinux servers that exist on the internet have become a joke among the hacker community. "They make a game out of it," he says. "The SELinux team will scramble to make a new patch to fix one problem, and they've already compromised a bunch of boxes with a different exploit."

    With these incontroverible facts staring (what's left of) the Linux community in the face, they can only draw one conclusion: Linux is already dead.