McVoy Strikes Back

cranos writes "Fast on the heels of his previous article claiming the kernel is at risk of Bad Things over the BitKeeper fuss, Daniel Lyons has released a new article where Larry McVoy attacks the Open Source movement as non-innovative and dependent on the kindness of corporations. The following quote says it all: 'The open source guys can scrape together enough resources to reverse engineer stuff. That's easy. It's way cheaper to reverse engineer something than to create something new. But if the world goes to 100% open source, innovation goes to zero. The open source guys hate it when I say this, but it's true.'"

Comments

Re:I can't disagree

[CaptainZapp]

I am a big open source fan, but I can't disagree with this. Most open source applications are built as replacements for commercial applications.

So what exactly was it that products like sendmail, bind, apache, etc where copying from the closed source world? It also seems that Internet Explorer starts to rip off features, which where introduced with open source browsers. (Safe for Opera, but it was Firefox' success which finally convinced MS of tabed browsing and the implementation has yet to be seen).

I'd wager that the internet would be a duller place, would it solely be reliant on such engineering gems lik IIS and Exchange (which came later in the first place).

Re:McVoy doesn't get it

[RickHunter]

The other thing about the services model is this... Not everyone wants the same set of features. With proprietary software, if it doesn't have a feature you want, you might be able to submit a request, but usually, you just have to suck it up and deal. With open-source software, you can pay someone - usually the creator - to implement any features you need on top of their (presumably) mature codebase.

Never, ever underestimate the massive value of this.

Re:Oh please

[RupW]

So, again, not open source, but the projects being hobby projects leads to incomlete projects. However, the great thing about open source is that everyone who feels like it can pick up those projects and work on them, even if the original developer isn't interested anymore.

Sure. I've had a few similar replies so maybe I needed to quote more of the guy I was replying to. Roughly:

Larry: Money drives software innovation
GGP: Hobbyist time works just as well
Me: Hobbyist time will only get you so far

As another AC pointed out, yes, the innovation often will happen in the hobbyist bit. But you're not going to get complete, visible innovative software unless you go full cycle. Sure, someone else can pick it up an run with it but it's hard to get those people to notice your project unless you've got it so far.

Yes, there are plenty of OSS projects that do go full cycle but they're often the popular-closed-source clones that Larry's complaining about. The ones you cite all are, arguably.

Re:So, you programmers ready to give up your jobs?

[llefler]

So, what happens to all the programmers in the world when everything goes open source and free?

My job consists of writing software that the company I work for will never earn a dime from. (directly) We don't write software for the sake of earning money from it. We write it to solve a business need.

The majority of our time is not spent doing software development. It's spent supporting our users, fixing bugs, adding small features, or modifications. All of which would still be required if we were using OSS.

I'm valuable to the company I work for not so much because I'm a programmer, but because I understand our business environment and can apply that knowledge to software. It's unlikely management would ever be able to surf over to Freshmeat and download something that could replace what I do.

Besides, I wouldn't work for McDonalds, I'm partial to driving trucks. I'm already used to long hours and low pay.

Re:wouldn't need to

[telbij]

Alright, I just created the official announcement:

http://www.websaviour.com/templation/