Rating System for Open Source Software

prostoalex writes "Carnegie Mellon University, Intel and SpikeSource are launching a rating system for open source software, New York Times says. OpenBRR 'is being proposed as a new standard model for rating open source software. It is intended to enable the entire community (enterprise adopters and developers) to rate software in an open and standardized way.'"

Comments

Oh No!

[AAeyers]

This could be hurtful! Everyone should be a winner!

Think of the children!

Re:Oh No!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a way to be so lucky.

some kids get it easier than others

Re:Oh No!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the reason that "traditional" sports days in British primary schools have been banned.

Re:Oh No!

[Ithika]

Poppycock, complete and utter. Just today I was reading in the newspaper (The Herald) about a parent who had been shocked by the primal behaviour of other parents at his/her daughter's sports day. Sports day is alive and well; playground kickabouts have not been banned; exams still get marked with a potential 'fail' grade. Do not adjust your television sets, but please upgrade your newspaper as it's feeding you shit.

Re:Oh No!

[sillybilly]

Free software, by definition, is software that's not used to extort money.

But how are you going to reward the creators? How are they going to feed?

This rating system could be one step in the right direction.

Rating could determine donation-worthiness of software - say there was a universal tax levied, or universal donation fund by businesses and foundations, and then the money could distributed by professionals who know where to spend the buck most efficiently, which developpers are about to die of hunger, who are the skinniest of the starving artists.

Feeding intellectuals is important, but motivating them with extra money beyond a certain limit, doesn't work so well. They start to care more about other things. You know, this is how scientists worked in the old days - someone took them into their royal court, gave them a stipend, and told them, go, play, bring me fame. I want to have the best paintings, the most beautiful palaces, and the smartest and most renowned mathematicians in my royal court. Science flourished through open communications and correspondence. These days, if you're not allowed to build on top of what idea I wrote about in my letter, and improve upon it without licensing the intellectual property first, you simply can't 'stand on shoulders of giants', everything stalls and gets locked down. Still, there was reimbursment in the old days too, but this value measurement unit wasn't cold cash, it wasn't money. What was taken as an ethical principle was giving proper credit to the authors, instead of "stealing" their work, or buying them out so you could stick your own name on it. There was a lot of motivation by the scientists to produce and share their achievements with their peers, because of both ego-boost, and because they loved devoting themselves to their 'hobby', or 'passion,' and they really got an intellectual high out of reading their peers' creations, just like you get a high from reading a poem. The feeling of radiant beauty, in your own thoughts, and in the thoughts of others tuned in to the same wavelength can be quite ecstatic. This is how slashdot functions. There is similarly a lot of motivation among free software programmers, for the same reasons.

Unfortunately simple recognition of your accomplishments by your peers isn't able to feed you, and a lot of free software developers end up living in their mother's basements. If there was some kind of fair system of performance measurements, other than the free-market-money-extorting method, maybe there would be a way to properly reward these people, and feed them too at the same time, because what they give to the world is often so much more than what they take. There is a net generation of benefit, but you have to be careful to still properly allocate rewards, otherwise the "they give so much more than they take" could get out of balance. Imagine accounting the cost of food, lodging, and living needs of Isaac Newton, compared to the worth of his output. It just doesn't even make sense to measure it in money, because if he made $10 billion or $15 trillion or whatever Bill Gates makes, it wouldn't have affected his level of production that much. He still needed some basic living needs, but after those were met, passion, love, self satisfaction, and satisfaction from recognition were the much more significant driving forces. Money doesn't function well as a motivator above a certain limit, but creating a debt economy where everyone runs rounds in an infinite hampster-threadmill force to always worry about money, money forced to be a constant incentive, well that's not fair either. There is a need to shake up the US to bring back the age of inventions, the age of Edison, Tesla, Ford, Hall, of 1900, or even the age of Intel from 1960's. Why didn't the US come up with hybrid cars in 2000? Sending a bunch of whip-cracking Donald Trump cowboys shouting "Yeehawww! You're Fired!" on everyone's back isn't gonna inspire creativity. Fear is a powerful motivator, but come on. Professors get tenure, security, not whi

Re:Oh No!

[WaterBreath]

It's not the parents (yet?), it's the teachers. I have a few good friends who are going to college (here in the states) for teaching, and the ethics of self-esteem, validation, ego-protection, etc. underlies the entire curriculum. The ultimate priority of the teacher, as taught in these schools, is to make sure the kids don't feel bad about their progress or accomplishments (or lack thereof). Negative reinforcement in nearly all forms has been thrown out, treated now with the same air of disdain as "corporal punishment".

Fortunately this attitude hasn't seeped into parental society quite as deeply as some fear. If for no other reason than that parents are resistant to taking parenting tips from condescending teachers. Though the depth of penetration does appear to vary depending on location, economic stratum, etc. And I would be surprised if it did not continue to spread.

FUD from the NYT

[Catamaran]

The author of the article talks as though evaluating software objectively were a problem unique to adopters of Open Source:

Free software, despite the price, can be confusing and costly for corporations to use. A few freely distributed programs, like the Linux operating system and the Apache Web server, have become well known, but most are still unproved.

A more simple and accurate statement would be, "Software can be confusing and costly".

Re:FUD from the NYT

[Anonymous Coward]

how is this FUD? Most of the software on Sourceforge would meet the definition of unproved.

Try not being a knee-jerk fanboi for just one second.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[1000101]

"A more simple and accurate statement would be, "Software can be confusing and costly"."

The entire article is about open source software, not all software. His statement is valid.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

It is totally a problem unique to Open Source. We're all perfectly informed as to:
How empowering IBM's Software is.
How much we can get done using Microsoft software.
How well Oracle scales
And all thanks to their advertising. I mean, it's as if we already know EVERYTHING without even having to do any silly reading. When was the last time you had to actually install Microsoft software to know how good it was?

Thank goodness for TV.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[i.r.id10t]

Well, based on what I see during the install, I can see where spammers get their ideas for various enhancement products...

Re:FUD from the NYT

[wo1verin3]

The author of the article talks as though evaluating software objectively were a problem unique to adopters of Open Source

Not unique to open source but it affects open source projects more since they don't always have the marketing dollars to get word of a good product out there.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[timeOday]

Hah! The main difference is that with OSS, at least you can evaluate the software if you choose to spend the time to do so, without paying a big fee and agreeing to a ridiculous license. Furthermore, with commercial software there is more incentive to lie and exaggerate the software capabilities.

I don't blame the NYT, but I'd love to hear the rationalization for limiting the rating system to OSS. I know I'd love to rate a few of the commercial applications I've used. Some shareware sites do have ratings systems of a sort, but it's a sticky issue all around. Even comparing two cpu's that implement the exact same instruction set is something we can't all agree on!

Re:FUD from the NYT

[fbg111]

The author of the article talks as though evaluating software objectively were a problem unique to adopters of Open Source:

Good point, it's a problem with all software, and even moreso with proprietary software, I would argue. Open Source has the advantage that you can try/evaluate it indefinitely, inspect the source code yourself, and it rarely comes with a spiel from some idiot salesman that has never coded a day in his life yet says it can do everything you ask if it can do, even when it can't.

This rating system is not necessarily a bad thing though, especially if it helps non-techies become less intimidated by the still-techie-centric OSS world. However, it would be nice to apply it to all software, not just OSS. If the metrics could be made reasonably impartial, then it could be quite useful.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[EnronHaliburton2004]

A few freely distributed programs, like the Linux operating system and the Apache Web server, have become well known, but most are still unproved.

Surely, Captain Kirk, wrote that, article.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[Cyno]

Valid to whom?

I don't buy it.. but, then again, I use FOSS software all the time. So I'm confused why these big megabucks corps are confused. Didn't their exec go to highschool?

Software can be confusing and costly, if you're a moron.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[Anonymous Coward]

Should he have used "unproven"?

Seriously, unproved doesn't sound right.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[NDPTAL85]

Valid to those who usually pay for their software and are pleased with what they buy contrasted with those who try free software and are dissapointed in how crappy most of it performs, usually from a userfriendliness point of view.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[l3v1]

The entire article is about open source software, not all software. His statement is valid.

No it's not. The same can be said about commercial software too. Moreover, commercial software would also need such a rating system, since you'd better know what you pay for before it's too late.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[Bander]

Most of the software on Sourceforge would meet the definition of unproved.

So if I shove a CD in a box and charge money for it, the bits automatically become proven? Or are you deliberately missing the point you were replying too?

Try not being a knee-jerk fanboi for just one second.

Says the anonymous coward.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[Anonymous Coward]

(different AC)

So if I shove a CD in a box and charge money for it, the bits automatically become proven?

If you shove a CD in a box and sell it, you're not going to get away with "NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED" which all the Open Source licences have up front. Willingness to properly stand behind your product goes a long way towards my confidence. (In other words, it's also got to actually do what it says on the box.)

Obviously you could say the same sort of thing about my post with me posting this AC. The reason here is I don't really want to get involved in your petty name-calling match.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[hesiod]

> If you shove a CD in a box and sell it, you're not going to get away with "NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED"

You mean like disclaiming any liability and not guaranteeing fitness for any purpose, like most commercial software does?

> Willingness to properly stand behind your product goes a long way towards my confidence

I think you need to watch fewer TV commercials and read more Microsoft (et al) license agreements, etc. They don't stand behind their product either, except that they give a 900 number you can call them for $25 a minute to talk to someone who knows just as much (or less) as you do.

> The reason here is I don't really want to get

... called out for being wrong?

Re:FUD from the NYT

[Bander]

Willingness to properly stand behind your product goes a long way towards my confidence. (In other words, it's also got to actually do what it says on the box.)

You mean the way EULAs prohibit the purchaser from benchmarking the product? Or the way they state that there's no warranty against loss or damage? Have you even read a software license agreement for a commercial product recently? Basically, by agreeing to their license, you're indemnifying them from everything under the sun. The really high-class commercial outfits will rent you consultants to work around quirks in their product. I guess you could call that "standing behind the product".

And if an open source product does not do what it says on the box (err... website), you are always entitled to return it for a full refund. That's better than you get with most commercial software.

I'm not in a name-calling match, by the way. I simply pointed out that calling someone a "fanboi" [sic] is weak sauce when it comes from someone who posts as anonymous coward.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[aaron240]

FWIW, that appears to be 100% grammatically correct. Don't be a comma hater.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[Cyno]

That's it exactly. These execs seem to care more about user friendliness, pretty icons and such, than stability, security, features/functionality, and even TCO.

Re:FUD from the NYT

[NDPTAL85]

OSS really only has the edge on security and TCO. Stability isn't really a question anymore with XP or 2003 Server and features...you're kidding right? Proprietary actually has the edge there.

About freakin' time.

[generic-man]

If you execute a specific elisp file at a key time, emacs displays a very graphic mini-game involving Richard Stallman. As a responsible parent, I want to make sure that this sort of thing isn't seen by my children when I'm not watching them.

I applaud this rating system and wish it well.

Re:About freakin' time.

[Infernal Device]

If you execute a specific elisp file at a key time, emacs displays a very graphic mini-game involving Richard Stallman.

I would pay money not to see that.

My eyes! The burning!

Re:About freakin' time.

[Profane MuthaFucka]

It's called "Hot Bath" and because this involves Richard Stallman, it could make kids' heads explode.

Re:About freakin' time.

[American AC in Paris]

Oh, don't get your undies in a bunch. It's basically just Stallman and ESR "talking nerdy" to each other. There's hardly any physical contact, and what little there is is better described as "awkward" than "hot man-on-man action". Finally, and most importantly, it's important to note that they're both fully clothed.

*shudder*

(I kid! I kid!)

Re:About freakin' time.

[Tackhead]

> If you execute a specific elisp file at a key time, emacs displays a very graphic mini-game involving Richard Stallman. As a responsible parent, I want to make sure that this sort of thing isn't seen by my children when I'm not watching them.

You think you've got trouble? I bought this goddamn O'Reilly book, and right there in Bob-damned Chapter 15 if it ain't instructions on how to get Hot Coffee!

Re:About freakin' time.

[arbitraryaardvark]

Everybody loves eric raymond.
http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/sell-out
http://www.stripcreator.com/comics/arbi/300725

Re:About freakin' time.

[chris_eineke]

Emacs is already rated M - mature software. Can it get any worse? ;)

Re:About freakin' time.

[Anonymous Coward]

You think you kid, but This Link proves otherwise!

Re:About freakin' time.

[AngusL]

I feel that if any given application bombs in this rating system, it should really be branded a 'deferred success' rather than a 'failure'. Those 1337 hackers can be so hard on their programs.

.. so i could give them four thumbs down!

[Rethcir]

Seems to me like the quality of an open source program is directly corelated to how popular it is, since more users directly leads to more people fixing nagging bugs.

Re:.. so i could give them four thumbs down!

[nxtw]

...no. MySQL is the "world's most popular open source database", and is fairly horrible compared to both free alternatives like PostgreSQL and commercial alternatives like Oracle.

Re:.. so i could give them four thumbs down!

[patio11]

No, believe it or not, there are some open source programs whose primary users are not intended to also wear a developer hat. I saw an Ask Slashdot for a OSS movie ticketing system. The $6 / hr (sorry, not up on US minimum wage, insert proper number) teenagers and resident tech geek who keeps the printers running are both unlikely to be able to delve into the code and fix a race condition. It will be "Reset, kick box, pray" like it is in most of the world.

Re:.. so i could give them four thumbs down!

[Rethcir]

Funny, I used to drive a Geo Metro. My first car. It was decent enough as an everyday car, but it demanded a lot of attention both to drive and to maintain. Probably qualifies your allegory pretty well.

Rather ironic...

[soullessbastard]

So the site exists to provide feedback on open source software, but yet all of the RFC documents they provide for public consumption are using Microsoft Office formats. Seems like using OpenDocument or PDF would have been a bit more appropriate. What better introduction could you have to businesses than to let them know the world doesn't revolve around Microsoft Office.

ed

Re:Rather ironic...

[deft]

Actually you want them to be able to open it, and there might be a good chance that the people wanting to see an rating AREN'T using open software, but are considering it.

Re:Rather ironic...

[Catamaran]

Actually, the main white paper is in PDF: http://www.openbrr.org/docs/BRR_whitepaper_2005RFC 1.pdf.

Re:Rather ironic...

[macdaddy]

Here here. This is the first thing I noticed as well. I'm all for a rating system for open source projects (even if people use it for no other reason than to find projects that they hadn't found anywhere else). However how hypocritcal can we possibly be when we write reviews of open source software in a non-open source format? Good grief, people. What the hell were you thinking?

Frankly I prefer a review system based on raw numbers such as how FreshMeat.net handles ratings. How many downloads does a project get? How many click-throughs does the website get? How often does the project release new versions? How have individuals rated the project? Even SourceForge's rating system is a useful tool. I don't want people to give me a lengthy book review. Just give ma thumbs up or down in mass and I'll take it from there.

Re:Rather ironic...

[Brandybuck]

The Freshmeat method is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't go anywhere far enough. What does it tell you?

Obviously, popularity doesn't mean anything or we would still be using Windows. Downloads don't tell you anything about how good a project is. Downloads from repeat "customers" might, but Freshmeat doesn't tell you that. Clickthrus to the website don't tell you anything about how good a project is. It only tells you how enticing the project description is.

I want to discount their "vitality" statistic. Why should it matter how often software is released? Why should a good project that makes major releases every twelve months have less vitality than a crappy project that puts out a trivial release every two days? Why should a project that only announces it major versions on Freshmeat be marked down just because it doesn't announce every minor bugfix there as well? And what about *mature* and *stable* projects? All the vitality stat tells you is how often the software is changing. A high vitality is actually a mark of instability!

Users rating the project *does* tell you a lot. Unfortunately very few users rate projects. Freshmeat gives you a lot of metrics, but just like the stupid process at work, all it's good for is grist for some manager's PowerPoint presentation.

"And here on page 13 we can see that our website click thru to vitality ratio jumped two points in the last quarter. Thanks Bob for making that happen. Now moving on to the subscription statistics..."

Re:Rather ironic...

[Ingolfke]

Here here... I'd go a step further and save all of the files as LaTex files so you can easily convert them to whatever format you want. If the CIOs don't have the necessary software to convert/read LaTex files this will be a great opportunity to tell them to RTFM, write the code themselves, or atleast install the right software using apt-get or portage. So not only do they learn about the rating system they'll learn a lot about the community too.

Re:Rather ironic...

[nepheles]

The proper shout is "Hear, hear", which, when you think about it, makes an awful lot more sense.

Re:Rather ironic...

[nepheles]

The proper shout is "Hear, hear", which, when you think about it, makes a lot more sense.

Re:Rather ironic...

[Ingolfke]

You are obviously correct. And after checking up on this on the straight dope, I think I may use the more formal...

hear, all ye good people, hear what this brilliant and eloquent speaker has to say!

I think that'll go over real well around here.

Re:Rather ironic...

[macdaddy]

I must plead Long Day....

Re:Rather ironic...

[macdaddy]

A high vitality is actually a mark of instability!

I'd definitely disagree here. A high vitality mark just means that the project is continually making progress. It doesn't mean that it's instable. It means that the developers are actively moving forward with the project. I do agree that this isn't exactly a useful benchmark. Look at Sendmail's vitality. Ha! I'd consider it to be the best MTA and it from Freshmeat's number is looks like an abandoned project. :-)

Re:Rather ironic...

[Brandybuck]

A high vitality mark just means that the project is continually making progress.

Yes, but progress towards what? Is it new software desperately trying to reach the 1.0 mark? Or the older software desperately trying to patch all the bugs? With a few exceptions, stable software doesn't need a lot of releases.

Re:Rather ironic...

[macdaddy]

With that reasoning someone might call WuFTP "stable software" whereas I'd call it an outdated, unmaintained, abandoned piece of crap. I can see your point about a buggy project making lots of fixup releases. However that ignores all the other projects that are simply under active development. If I'm looking for a new tool to do a specific task I'm not necessarily looking for one that hasn't been updated since the days of Redhat 6 or for that matter Redhat 9. I greatly prefer something that's been updated in the last 1/2 year because that greatly increases the odds that someone on the development team is using a reasonably up to date box and thus probably fixed any compile-time bugs in the project's source that would be a problem on the newer release.

As long as they make the right choices

[Knome_fan]

As long as they make the right choices and rate vi, ehr, I mean emacs, no, I mean Gnome, wait no, KDE, oh, what I mean is xine, wait, no, I was talking about mplayer to be the best application, everything will be fine.

Re:As long as they make the right choices

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant to say nano, Xfce, and vlc.

Apology accepted.

Re:As long as they make the right choices

[kryten_nl]

Are the voices in your head engaged in your own private flamewar? :)

Good idea...

[msmercenary]

I can't count how many times I've googled for some OSS to do a specific task, and found what I wanted only after installing and uninstalling four programs that were buggy, slow, didn't have the features I wanted, or simply wouldn't build/install.

On the flip side, there has always been an inherent and objective rating system for the quality of non-free software -- At what price will enough people purchase it to make it worth producing?

Re:Good idea...

[superpulpsicle]

Well don't ask Intel. They are the worst people for rating anything. It's going to come down to whether it is optimized for their instructions to get points.

Re:Good idea...

[timeOday]

On the flip side, there has always been an inherent and objective rating system for the quality of non-free software -- At what price will enough people purchase it to make it worth producing?

I'd say the opposite is closer to the truth! In my experience, expensive software tends to be niche software with only a few customers, and plenty of rough edges. The cheap, workaday software (say, WinZip) is polished. Price has more to do with the dynamics of the competitive environment - value is just the upper bound on the price.

Most people are stupid, this will not work...

[Manip]

This is a silly idea. Most people don't know what good software is, they will always pick the thing with a giant paper-clip over something that runs ten fold faster... I fail to see how this is valid. Not least of all because a lot of OpenSource software isn't designed for the public domain and thus who would be able to say good things about it?

I would also like to ask what software being OpenSourced (as opposed to Closed or Free source) has to do with a rating system? Also what value is there is a 'standard' rating? And what is the standard? User Friendliness? Configuration? Standardisation? etc

Re:Most people are stupid, this will not work...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking the same thing.

Why should open source software be rated different than normal software? Its not like being open source automatically makes you better than the competition. I mean, how convincing would it be if a Linux distro openly proclaimed it was lackluster compared to Windows, but the fact that it is open source makes it better than it?

I'm sorry, but I use software to get things done, not gloat about how I'm using an open source program.

Re:Most people are stupid, this will not work...

[QuantumG]

Blah, if you RTFA you'd know what the standard was.

Re:Most people are stupid, this will not work...

[NineNine]

And do you know what "good" software is? Is there a defintion somewhere as to what "Good" is? That's what OSS geeks don't understand... there IS NO OBJECTIVE "GOOD". Most people (myself included) think that Windows is "good" because it's easy to use and it's cheap and it just works. I don't care about bloat, I don't care about compatibility. I don't care about the quality of code. "Good" in my mind is quite different than what you may call "Good".

And the whole reason for this is that most OSS is still very obscure. There are a few that shine (Apache, VNC), but most are programs most people have never heard of. So instead of downloading 10 copies of a DVD player, with none of them working properly, I could instead look at the ratings (TuCows, Download.com, etc.) and make a slightly more informed decision.

Re:Most people are stupid, this will not work...

[sykjoke]

Hey, checkout KDE apps.org if you want a good example of why rating systems for software don't work. Some of the highest rated apps are ok, but it starts to get random below the top 10-20.

e.g. Kommander is quite good, but it's an absolute bastard to do anything dynamic with (like a scanning com ports for modems and listing only ports where modems have been found) yet it gets into the top 10.

Gambas isn't bad either, but it's got some really odd quirks like all of the objects data isn't available in it's constructor or destructor, and the inheritance and even models are a bit weird.

Re:Most people are stupid, this will not work...

[NanoGator]

"I'm sorry, but I use software to get things done, not gloat about how I'm using an open source program."

Gloating about OSS software maxed out my karma!

Re:Most people are stupid, this will not work...

[ez_spike]

The fact that the development is open means that you can evaluate it more closely. With open source projects, bugs are usually open, code is certainly open, community is open. These things you can now measure. You can't measure these with proprietary software

If they do it right, it will help identify what...

[daviq]

If they do it right, it will help identify what open source projects are auctually still being updated and which ones have potential. What I see here is a rating guide for investors to choose projects to pour their funding into.

Moderating....

[fembots]

The rating system has 11 categories, including Normal, Offtopic, Flamebait, Troll, Redundant, Insightful, Interesting, Informative, Funny, Overrated and Underrated.

Each category is to be rated -1 to 5.

There will also be filtering tools so a potential corporate user can specify its most important considerations.

Re:Moderating....

[50m31sl4sh.]

In other news, SCO OpenServer 6 was recently rated by new system.
It is the first software ever that has been assigned ratings Flamebait, Troll and Offtopic.

When You Thought It Was Safe To Program...

[__aaclcg7560]

Does this mean that an Adult Only rating will be applied if the source code contains excessive amount of profanity in the comments? Will the U.S. Congress tax any OSS with an Adult Only rating? Will having clean code become the norm?

Re:When You Thought It Was Safe To Program...

[QuantumG]

I see your future! You will be rated to +5 Insightful by others, like you, who didn't even bother reading the article.

Re:When You Thought It Was Safe To Program...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

What is this "reading the article" you speak of?

Re:When You Thought It Was Safe To Program...

[Anonymous Coward]

wow u fat fucker shut ur fat mouth

Re:When You Thought It Was Safe To Program...

[__aaclcg7560]

Uh, no. Why don't you get a life? You'll be doing humanity a favor. ;)

Re:When You Thought It Was Safe To Program...

[maxwell demon]

Not only comments. Linux e.g. will be rated adult only, because of commands like fsck or strip.

And Windows get a ....

[DigitalDwarf]

Wonder if they will have ratings on: Windows, Linex, Modzilla. Really wonder what kind of rateing Windows will get?

Re:And Windows get a ....

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Since Windows is not Open Source Software, my guess is this does not apply.

Rate my pants

[Anonymous Coward]

General purpose software may or may not fit your needs, that's the advantage of F/OSS. Rate my pants, really there's about as much relevance to your companies IT adoption strategy in my shorts as there is in some random chump rating software.

Popularity ?

[glMatrixMode]

FOSS has always been rated by popularity among users. What's wrong/insufficient with this good old natural rating system ?

Re:Popularity ?

[frankthechicken]

Because Microsoft wins?

Re:Popularity ?

[iabervon]

It's time consuming to ask everybody whenever you're looking for some software. If you were choosing between qmail, exim, and sendmail, it would be tricky to accurately determine their popularities without some formal method. And applying a formal method takes a lot of work, which would need to be done by everyone trying to choose a program. The point of this project is to do that for you.

Re:Popularity ?

[Brandybuck]

Because if it were only up to popularity, you would still be using Windows!

Re:Popularity ?

[patio11]

Why do we have movie reviewers when we can have box office receipts to tell the same thing (substitute books, games, etc)? Answer: because its more useful for you to have someone whose judgement you trust act as a proxy for your utility than it is to have the market average act as a proxy for your utility.

Information aquisition costs regarding software are insane, too, compared to the price of a book. Cost of determining Harry Potter #6 was definately a good read: $23 and 8 hours of reading. Cost of determining Red Hat CCM was a package I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy and was totally unsuited for the purposes our customers wanted to put it to: in excess of $2,500 of dev time (luckily billed to my employer, not to me).

Might be good to include ALL OS's

[deft]

As someone who is a windows user I'd like to see objective direct comparisons for all OS's so that I can see what will be seamless and what i will have trouble with so i can see what I'm getting myself into.

I guess an analogy might be buying a new type of car. I only have my current car to judge the new one by, and I know my old car pretty well... so how does it stack up to my old car, and what are these new models they are offering.

Re:Might be good to include ALL OS's

[camarojoe]

I agree. Someone who doesnt have the required skills to run a certain software should'nt run it and give it a poor rating because it was confusing for them. This is like someone who has no clue what a clutch is and giving a manual transmission car a poor rating.

Awesome! It uses an open file format

[Anonymous Coward]

Not! wtf is with using XLS files?

1% good, 99% bad

[qube99]

That was easy! Thanks Intel!

i don't get spikesource (yet)

[Anonymous Coward]

how do they differ from vetted rpms from redhat or debugged debs etc etc? really aren't they just distributing "debugged" metapackages? is there a business there outside of being a distro vendor?

YAY!

[codergeek42]

Now we have a way to continue the ongoing GNOME/KDE/Xfce flamewars! *sigh*

Re:YAY!

[kihjin]

What do you mean ongoing? We all know XFCE wins hands down.

*ducks*

Re:YAY!

[cbreaker]

No, not really. With this system, both Gnome and KDE would be rated as important, popular, quality OSS software.

It doesn't have to be one or the other. It can be both, which is why OSS is so great.

The problem with rating software...

[Dthoma]

...is that often people will give a piece of software a low rating as a sort of "cry for help" if they can't figure out how to get it to work. Like, "I would've given X a 10/10 rating but I couldn't work out how to make it do Y.".

Re:The problem with rating software...

[Blakey Rat]

Good, then maybe software developers will improve their user interfaces. If a user can't figure out how to do X, then X might as well not even be implemented... it amounts to the same thing.

Re:The problem with rating software...

[broller]

If a user can't figure out how to do X, then X might as well not even be implemented... it amounts to the same thing.

I absolutely agree if we change it to "If all users can't figure out how to do X" but saying "a user" leaves no room for a learning curve. I think it's completely valid to expect that some software will be written that is not necessarily meant for the novice user.

Re:The problem with rating software...

[Anonymous Coward]

If user can't figure out how to use a software, then software is obviously too hard to use so it deserves a low rating.

As good as CMM?

[orthogonal]

Carnegie-Mellon these are the guys who love to quantify the unquantifiable.

Didn't they also give us the "Capability Maturity Model"? I've seen organizations race to get to CMM-3 or CMM-4, and it's all been a joke.

A bunch of highly paid consultants tell everyone a new way to count beans ("under CMM, we group the beans starting from the right, not the left....").

Promises are made about code auditing, but once the CMM level has been awarded (usually by highly paid consultants who just happen to work with the highly paid consults who "mentored" the company's CMM training), all tat's actually done is that the people doing the real work of writing software are regularly distracted by a clown with a check-list and a clipboard.

Carnegie-Mellon continues to have a fetish for quantifying and for creating check-lists, and middle management continues to have a fetish for anything that allows them to quantify (even spuriously), because it takes the risk and bother out of their jobs.

Middle Manager: "The WordPerfect Project only got a 3 on the Carnegie Mellon software score, but the Clippy Project got a 5! So, it's perfectly safe for me to decide that to disband the WordPerfect Project and devote its resources to the Clippy Project. (And if it turns out later that was a bad decision, they can't fire me, because I relied on hard numbers generated by a known process!"

Re:As good as CMM?

[TapeCutter]

From a personal perspective, I like to imagine software has been tested to death by totally anal people with checklists before I find my life depends on it.

Re:As good as CMM?

[TrappedByMyself]

Case in point of why developers rarely end up in management.

Middle Manager: "Umm, Mr Developer, upper management and the customer are having a hard time following the progress of the project. They also aren't sure of what kind of quality control we have. We don't doubt your ability, but it's just really hard for us to see the direction. Do you mind if we follow this simple process, so I have a realistic progress report to present at the next meeting?"

Developer: "Begone, you ignorant slut! It is finished when I deem it so. And not one second sooner! Leave my sight."

Re:As good as CMM?

[Snorpus]

Didn't get accepted to CMU, huh? Had to settle for one of those non-quant schools, like Harvard or Princeton?

Re:As good as CMM?

[hackstraw]

Didn't they also give us the "Capability Maturity Model"? I've seen organizations race to get to CMM-3 or CMM-4, and it's all been a joke.

I've worked at a CMM-3 company before. It looks like the CMM has actually been superseded by something else so Its not easy to get the list of qualities for each level, but they are something like 1) random monkeys writing code 2) random monkeys writing more than one program 3) random monkeys writing code "repeatedly" with a content management system (CVS or similar) 4 and 5 I don't remember, but its not anything remarkable beyond what you like about quality software.

Anyway, the CMM system is/was not very earth shattering, it did give companies some outside accreditation beyond marketers saying "we are great!". For certain government contracts, a CMM minimum level was required like a college degree or HS degree for a job applicant. When I worked there, this was my first programming position for a "for profit" company (I have worked before and since at a University). I came from an open source background. By that I mean that I learned how to program, do system administration, and kernel/low level OS stuff by reading code and various websites, newsgroups, READMEs, or whatever.

My point, is that I code from the styles that I learned from various GNU projects and the Linux kernel (not X consortium or others). And the habits I learned were up there on the CMM scale, and _below_ what my company was doing at CMM-3. Granted, this is not a large sample size, but this was a national company that did large government and commercial contracts.

Back on topic, software quality is variable across the board. OSS software, Windows freeware/shareware, Mac freeware/shareware, commercial software, etc. On all areas, I've seen everything from excellent and I could not ask for much more to complete shit and a waste of time. I've thought about having a software rating system and how good that would be.

Re:As good as CMM?

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

Carnegie-Mellon these are the guys who love to quantify the unquantifiable.

Didn't they also give us the "Capability Maturity Model"?

FYI, CMM came from Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute, an affiliated but wholly separate spinoff. This rating system comes from Carnegie Mellon West, a new spinoff campus in Silicon Valley (on the other side of the country from their main campus in Pittsburgh). Neither of these systems come from CMU's main School of Computer Science. Plus, I believe Carnegie Mellon has more computer science researchers than any other university in the world, so it's silly to look at a CMU project and say "these are the same guys" who did anything...

Re:As good as CMM?

[eraserewind]

I think you misunderstand what CMM et al, are all about. Software "Quality" checklists have nothing to do with software testing (except perhaps to ensure that the header, footer and coverpage of the test document were conformant).

Re:As good as CMM?

[Spoing]

I've worked at a CMM-3 company before. It looks like the CMM has actually been superseded by something else

CMMI.

so Its not easy to get the list of qualities for each level, but they are something like 1) random monkeys writing code 2) random monkeys writing more than one program 3) random monkeys writing code "repeatedly" with a content management system (CVS or similar) 4 and 5 I don't remember, but its not anything remarkable beyond what you like about quality software.

Yep; they aren't even training people in CMM anymore. CMMI can be seen as CMM v.2. The main differences are that CMM was focused on software. CMMI is company-wide.

While it is true that CMM and CMMI don't necessarily lead to quality software, they do lead to a formalized process.

To put it into perspective;

* Perfection is inconsistant. Like a perfect peach, it is short lived and depends on the moment.

* Perfect processes schedule events but not perfection. Consistancy is the enemy of perfection.

Note that I am using 'perfect' as the most ideal and satisfying results over a short period of time. Grinding everyone down to fill out forms isn't a sign of perfection. It is a sign of necessity and consistancy.

I'm a big advocate for process, though anyone who follows process without any clue of perfection is missing the point of things like CMM and CMMI.

Re:As good as CMM?

[TapeCutter]

"I think you misunderstand what CMM et al, are all about."

I think you underestimate my experience in software development.

I belive your bad experiences are due to a common mistake many bussiness make, ie: CMM being enfored from "on high" using a few contractors to "mentor" under-qualified people as the "quality assurance" people, ie: The PHB's want to tack quality on at the end of a project, the rest of the staff can keep churning out code. To you it seems a waste of time because some "quality" person is constantly fussing about style over content (header, footer, etc). The worst example I have encoutered was a 16 page functional spec for a one line config change. When implemented like that CMM is a total waste of effort that does nothing but convert junior staff into senior PHB's.

A crappy CMM implementation does not mean CMM is useless, it simply means the "quality" person has a lot of power but very little insight. The result is everyone else does thier best to ignore or even antagonise them. That kind of implementation does nothing but confuse and frustrate the people doing the "real" work. CMM is about repeatable and consistent process not checklists, the level determines the scope of the consistency (project, dept, enterprise, ect).

CMM is designed so that third parties can determine what standards (if any) have been applied to the project or organisation as a whole. It does not mandate that you create a gazillion checklists, it asks for proof that you have done what you said you were planning to do.

CMM is an extremely simple concept, just look at the bullet points for the five levels and that's pretty much all the meat there is. However, implementing the concept is much more difficult than it appears, mainly because "mentoring" software engineers is akin to hearding cats. If the "cats" are not seeing benifits after a year, then it is not thier fault or the fault of CMM. The blame rests with management and thier inability to see the inherent difficulty of imposing a proffesional engineering process onto people with years of experience doing it "the old way", (The old way: Ironically this sort of thing was already mature in the mainframe practices of the 60's). Also many times consultants are brought in for a short time, they have no time to pick out the good bits from the "old way" so they attempt to force a "template solution".

BTW: If you don't use CMM "et al", how can your prospective customer's gauge your ability to do the job on time and on budget? OTOH: If you do use CMM "et al", how do you convince them you have stuck to the standards without the use of independent quality audits?

Re:As good as CMM?

[twasserman]

As the head of Carnegie Mellon West's Center for Open Source Investigation (COSI) and contributor to the Business Readiness Ratings, I can assure you that none of us associated with COSI have any connection to the Software Engineering Institute and the Capability Maturity Model. That said, the CMM has served a useful purpose for some organizations, even if it only gets them focused on the various processes that are needed to build good software. It's interesting to see how many of the tools on project sites like SourceForge are intended to support an organized development process, which was the original goal of the SEI. But "orthogonal" is right: I've shown how you could get a CMM Level 4 rating even if your development tools were pencil and paper, your developers lacked a high school education, and your working environment was a prison cafeteria. As for Business Readiness Ratings,people and companies are going to do their own evaluations, using the numeric data available on projects, applying their own weightings to the different evaluation categories, considering the intended use (production, experimentation) in the process. Some software that I might use in a research environment may not be ready for use in a mission-critical production environment in a bank -- and the project team may like it that way. I hope that everyone will evaluate the BRR idea on its own merits, and keep in mind that the ultimate goal is to accelerate the acceptance of open source software in places that have traditionally not even been willing to consider such products.

Re:As good as CMM?

[typical]

I know a lot of people who were tied up with SCS who didn't have a very high opinion of SEI.

Anyway, CMU SCS is where research about, y'know, neat computer science comes from, and SEI is where you get, well, management procedures. Not that management procedures can't be important and all, but they sure are a lot less interesting.

Bound to be biased.

[Willy on Wheels]

The competition in open source software is bitterly intense. What's to stop a bot being written to do en-masse bad ratings on a software that someone dosen't like?

Please stop calling everything FUD

[Knome_fan]

Really, cut the paranoia.

While you do have a point, you really went to great pains to misunderstand what the author wanted to say.

Free software is still uncharted territory for many companies and they have no point of reference to see if some free software fits their needs or not, or even simply if it is ready for production use.

This can make the adoption of free software more confusing than staying with your propietary software, which probably is the reason why some people thought up the project the article is about.

I really fail to see what should be FUD about this.

Re:Please stop calling everything FUD

[Stephen Samuel]

The grandparent's point is that this is as much an issue with Proprietary code as it is with Open source. It's actually worse with closed source because you have any number of the following problems (in no specific order):

1. Licenses which purport to take away your right to freely review the product
2. Sales people who only get paid {,decently} if they sell as many copies of the software as possible,
3. an inability to try the 'live' software without having to fork out the full price.
4. developers who may have no freedom to talk openly about the bugs they know about
5. no opportunity to see/change the underlying source code

These questions are pretty much unique to closed source. The real wierdity is that the licenses that some propreitary software has might make this sort of list (at least purportedly) illegal for them.

Re:Please stop calling everything FUD

[zogger]

what you say is true, but the project appears to be an effort to help migration from what these corps have now-your aforementioned closed source, no evaluation, expensive, etc stuff, to open source and free or cheap stuff. They *already have software* they are using now, and paid for. it's part psychological, people assume free=cheap as in shoddy. These people with the decision making powers want reviews to look at, printouts that make some sense to themselves and their bean counters. They can't just go "swell, I see this free stuff on this website here my nephew showed me that alleges we can do x,y,z, lets migrate all 15,000 desktops to it tomorrow!" That just ain't gonna work too well. They have to be eased into it, and some sort of certification from a review process will help things along for some people.

i.e. "consumer reports" for business software of the FOSS brand. They already have a ton of "reports" for the expensive closed source stuff.

offtopic but don't know where else to ask

[johansalk]

What's the longest slashdot thread ever? (don't mod me down please!) - A google search provided me with no answer, so, in case anyone knows, what's the longest slashdot thread ever?

Re:offtopic but don't know where else to ask

[ezzzD55J]

Check the hall of fame. http://developers.slashdot.org/hof.shtml

Re:offtopic but don't know where else to ask

[Kethinov]

I think he wanted to know the longest actual thread, not the story with the most comments.

This is a Gates chess move.

[elucido]

This move looks like a really strategic chess move. What better way to limit the open source market than to be the group that decides which software is cool or not. I think while there SHOULD be a way to rate software, it should not be monopolized by one group. There should be several groups working on a project such as this.

Gentoo

[ndansmith]

From the article: Each category is to be rated 1 to 5.

Gentoo has been given an OpenBRR of "1" for "1337 haxorz only."

Re:Gentoo

[kryten_nl]

I read a comment yesterday that someones grandmother was using it, can't be that 1337 then. She also won the state lottery 17 times, has virtually no electricity or phone bills and proclamed the excistence of the 10th planet 14 days before the story broke.... Wait, I see your point.

oh good

[Anonymous Coward]

another solution looking for a problem
 
THANKS OPEN SOURCE

Great! PHBs now have another reason to avoid OSS

[kimanaw]

Yes, excellent idea. We'll rate all OSS with all these nice quantitative factors using mostly arbitrary value assignments, so the already risk-averse PHB community have yet another reason to avoid using OSS!

I'm certain the boys in the Redmond boardroom are all nodding their heads in delighted approval.

Perhaps members of the OSS community should turn the tables ? I suggest we create a set of metrics to rate the business users of OSS, e.g.,

• Has XYZ Corp. contributed any patches ?
• Has XYZ Corp. contributed any staff time ?
• Has XYZ Corp. offered to hire the key developers for consulting or as FTE's ?
• Has XYZ Corp. offered to pay for a support contract ?
• Do users at XYZ Corp. know what they're doing when they send a support request ?
• How do users at XYZ Corp. respond when told the feature/bugfix they want will take time or resources the development staff currently doesn't have ? Do they offer to contribute a fix, or offer any financial support ?

That is a rating system I could use!

Seriously, this is only a good idea for the PHB's looking to for reasons to avoid OSS, and it will likely kill small/niche OSS projects that don't have the huge download numbers these metrics seem to require.

Cool!

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

But what if someone patches your M rated Open Source project and then it's retroactively changed to AO?

Welcome to chessmind people!

[elucido]

First we rate professors. Then we rate corporations. Finally we rate software. The question is, who's doing the rating? The open source community? Or a secretive group of execs who all have a stake in Microsoft? Read between the lines, its a strategic move. Microsoft knows that to stop open source they have to influence how its viewed, and how the software is viewed, which software can become popular and which cant. What better way to do this than to control the standard body that reviews software? Look, if software needs to be reviewed, let each corporation hire someone to do that. Or better let the corporation hire the community to do these studies, but do not EVER allow the private sector corporations to review itself. It just does not make any sense unless you are Bill Gates and or work for Microsoft.

A good idea...

[Junior J. Junior III]

I just hope this rating system doesn't suck as much as slashdot moderation.

Already been done. Capitalism go home.

[sl4shd0rk]

http://freshmeat.net/ Pick any project. Look where it says rating. This is a measure of how much the software blows. Look underneath the rating and you'll see popularity. This measures how many people blew it. Go to work.

Re:Already been done. Capitalism go home.

[Fourier]

The Freshmeat ratings would be far more useful if more users actually bothered to rate the software they have tried. Even if that were the case, these OpenBRR dorks are right about one thing: a simple scalar metric is not terribly informative for describing the many attributes of a software package. I wish FM would have separate categories for ease of installation, documentation quality, usability, etc.

I RATE SLASHCODE THE BIGGEST FAGWARE OF THEM ALL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you SEEN this "Slashcode" shit? I wouldn't plop that pile of CmdrTaco shit on my worst enemy! HEY SLASHCODE "CODERS": YOU SUCK!

Use Chapelles rating system for closed/proprietary

[concept10]

"I wish I had more hands, so I could give those titties four thumbs down."

Listen here: http://www.goyk.com/flash.asp?path=659/

1 to 10

[b17bmbr]

1: absolutely horshit. stuff i wouldn't use if paid a million dolars.

10: barely usable, requires constant tweaking, stuck at version 0.9.3, crashes occasionally, and requires three new libraries each upgrade which break other applications.

Re:1 to 10

[Xtifr]

Hmm, I think I agree completely. However, as another poster noted earlier, this all applies just as much to proprietary software as to "open source". :)

Re:1 to 10

[berbo]

My software goes up to 11! Its one l55t-er.

Re:1 to 10

[typical]

Not true. Proprietary software suffers from version inflation.

You can't get away from subjective

[syousef]

This is like rating computer games, or art, or anything else for that matter. It's subjective, and one person giving a considered score 9/10 doesn't mean another person trying to be equally fair doesn't give it 7/10.

Another thing: The evaluation often has to do with what you're using the software for. What would you rate better? A saw or a hammer? Depends on the situation right?

Re:You can't get away from subjective

[ez_spike]

That's totally right. That's why BRR incorporates the idea of Function Orientation. BRR doesn't rate a browser with measurements for web server. You may want to read the whitepaper first. Ask more questions at their forum.

Re:You can't get away from subjective

[syousef]

So if you have 6 different web browsers geared to different types of users (elite/developer vs mom and pop say) which one is better?

Re:You can't get away from subjective

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you have 6 different web browsers geared to different types of users (elite/developer vs mom and pop say) which one is better?

Firefox.

My system

[stratjakt]

Slashcode is a 0, linux is a 4, firefox is a 5

It goes to a hundred. And its quasi-logarithmic.

Bow down to purity...

[haakondahl]

...God forbid your target audience (remember them? the people whom you would like to convert to Open Source, but AREN'T USING IT YET) should be able to read TFA. Ironic is your belief that only through studiously avoiding the software used by 95% (?) of the world can we hope to reach 95% of the world.

Why Not...

[Prototerm]

Why not use the existing standardized rating scale used for proprietary software?

Oh, wait...

Am I what?

[Lithus]

So basically its 'Am I Hot or Not' for OSS.

Re:Am I what?

[Anonymous Coward]

[free as in beer] . ._. . ._.._._._.___. . .__ .__ . ._. average rating
[free as in speech]...OpenGoatse 0.99pre-3..........0.3

(0) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) [Vote!]

I can see how you might feel that way..

[msimm]

But the truth is propriety software is quite well reviewed (there's an entire industry who makes it their business to review and recommend commercial software, usually somewhat usefully).

Reading reviews of you're favorite Windows Antivirus software or researching an enterprise class database package will turn up a wealth of infomation (of course you still need to dig into it and make the final decision, but some things simply can't be helped:).

OSS software is comparably a total mess, with only certain major projects (and not surpisingly usually projects with some sort commercial support, i.e. apache, mysql, sendmail, etc, but the water gets pretty muddy quickly).

And aside from all those mainly concrete (maybe to you and I anyway) worries there are other concerns when reviewing OSS software for deployment in a business/production environment: support, boss appeal; someone has to sign off even if the software is free, that the software is mature/will meet or exceed your needs and that (if you decide to leave the company) its reasonably well supported (so someone that comes in and doesn't know the particular software has a reasonably good chance of configuring and maintaining it).

Those crazy business people.

Re:I can see how you might feel that way..

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like how you used "who" for an industry:

there's an entire industry who makes it their business to review and recommend commercial software, usually somewhat usefully

But not for people:

so someone that comes in and doesn't know the particular software has a reasonably good chance of configuring and maintaining it

Congratulations, you're now officially leading in race for Grammar Moron of the Week. I know your mother will be very proud if you win, which looks quite likely.

Re:I can see how you might feel that way..

[ducomputergeek]

There is the measure that some OSS applications that are worth a darn rise to the top. Those that don't are buried on some obsecure inactive SF project.

Re:I can see how you might feel that way..

[msimm]

That just ain't right.

(*cough* bite me *cough) :)

Re:I can see how you might feel that way..

[msimm]

It could be, but I work in the industry. The truth is that while a lot of good projects get/become commercially supported a lot of good projects don't. And even out of the ones that do a lot still don't get the kind of thorough review that you'd find in the commercial software business (TMDA, Postfix, etc).

And of course they miss out on the stuctured feedback that kind of review provides.

Re:I can see how you might feel that way..

[Kludge]

But the truth is propriety software is quite well reviewed

The truth is that some of it is and some of it isn't. And a good number of the "reviews" are done by hacks who are getting paid by the developers for it.

Reading reviews of you're favorite Windows Antivirus software or researching an enterprise class database package will turn up a wealth of infomation ... OSS software is comparably a total mess, with only certain major projects

To the contrary. I can type the name of almost any OSS project into Google and get lots of posts by people who have actually used the software. A lack of hits indicates software that's probably not mature.

Or I can just search the software that I have installed on my computer. Suse has no problem picking out thousands of great software packages for me to use.

... support, ... supported ... maintaining

Support is way over rated. I have never ever gotten good support from any company that produced anything. The only company worth what I've seen them paid was a little 4-5 person Linux consulting/computing biz we contracted. One of the reasons they do so well is that they have the ability to grab and utilize whatever code does the job.

Re:I can see how you might feel that way..

[msimm]

With business the rules are different:

A) there is no free, free costs money in support or special training, but more importantly free might cost PHB's (or more likely the tech person who was responsible for deploying it) their JOBs.

B) Support, support, support. If you're going to deploy something on a business critical production system the rules of the game change a little bit more as little issues like: is it well documented (no, forums only count for the poor sap trouble shooting it, you and I may have had to learn to suffer through them, but the MSCE they hire to replace me might not and no-one wants to worry about that), if it breaks, who do I call? Who do I blame? What is the software lifecycle? Will I need to build-out my entire system in another year when the developer decides to change the behavior of a critical system (or more).

Business needs conservative dependability, I'll assume the business you work in doesn't have some of the normal bureaucratic hurdles mine does, which is great, but not reflective of 99% of the business market where the MBA works at the top and the CS geeks stay more towards middle management (or lower).

But having come into this industry as more of a starry eye OSS geek I have to say I can see a lot of their reasoning, dependability is #1, innovation can be a risky endeavor and often doesn't provide the same rewards as say having a networked production system with 99.999% reliability.

Even if I said screw all the none-sense and built out a better, more flexable, cheaper system who would know how to support it? Me. How much would it cost them in, time, hassle, money, etc to replace me? Colleges aren't exactly rolling out OSS gurus left and right yet. What if I died. And what about the developers doing the software production? Do they have some understanding whats going into this system? A lot of people rely on these systems, and when they don't work as expect we lose customers, that can tank a business.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a OSS believer. But I believe in being realistic too. We use Apache in production (on Sun for now) with an Oracle backend, we'll be replacing Coldfusion with PHP. The revolution is hitting business, I see a formalized rating system as a win-win for those who are interested in using it, those who aren't can simply go on like nothing ever happened.

Finally, I have done a good deal of software research both personal and professional; commercial isn't perfect, but its still ahead of the OSS software archives or news group searches we are mainly limited too. And showing the PHB a shiny article from Enterprise is going to make a hell of a lot smoother argument then the freshmeat rating any day.

Anyway, welcome to my world. :)

Re:I can see how you might feel that way..

[Tim C]

Support is way over rated. I have never ever gotten good support from any company that produced anything.

There are two aspects to support; actually getting support, so that your problems are fixed quickly and efficiently is one of them. The other, and often just as important to some people, is being able to point the finger at someone else.

It's arse-covering - being able to say "Yes, there's a problem, yes, I recommended the software, but it's not our fault, the support firm is dicking us about - we've paid them, they should fix it!" is a lot better than "Yes, there's a problem, yes, I recommended the software, we're doing our best - sorry"

Generally speaking, managers and clients don't want to hear that in the event of a problem there's a whole bunch of people on the internet who are bound to be able to help. They want to know that someone with the appropriate expertise is going to be dedicated to fixing the problem ASAP. Whether or not that's actually what happens is often beside the point. (Generally if it doesn't, it just means that next time you'll get support from someone else instead)

Re:I can see how you might feel that way..

[l3v1]

But the truth is propriety software is quite well reviewed (there's an entire industry who makes it their business to review and recommend commercial software, usually somewhat usefully).

Oh come on. Please tell us, how many of such reviews have you read. And please tell us, hwo many of those read reviews were actually good, and not written by some fake ignorant "pro" with too much spare time and nothing else to do (yes that goes for quite many "professional" sites also, you'd be surprised).

Most of such reviews are good for nothing but wasting one's time for a useless piece of crap. True, the 6pack masses may find a good time reading them, but you really think people sane enough would base a millions $ drop based on such reviews ?

Re:I can see how you might feel that way..

[Anonymous Coward]

OSS software is comparably a total mess, with only certain major projects (and not surpisingly usually projects with some sort commercial support, i.e. apache, mysql, sendmail, etc, but the water gets pretty muddy quickly).

/etc has commercial support??

Re:I can see how you might feel that way..

[kelnos]

OSS software...

So are you the kind of person who enters their PIN number into the ATM machine while looking at the LCD display?

(Laugh, it's funny! Well, maybe...)

Re:I can see how you might feel that way..

[dublin]

Someone with mod points mod parent up. This is an extraordinarily to-the-point explanation of why OSS may never attain the penetration a lot of /.'ers would like. In my own, new company, for instance, I'm leaning heavily toward commercial, even Microsoft (!) soultions for much of the corparate infrastructure, for a lot of the same reasons. Sure, I can kludge together a mass of OSS stuff, to run the company, but then it's totally unmaintainable, and relies on way too much expert knowledge of way too many things that only contribute peripherally to the company's success. One thing the hackers don't get is that applications and operating systems, as individual, separate things, are effectively useless - what's needed is a real integrated soultion that meets real business needs. SME server was a great step in the right direction before Mitel abandoned stewardship of development and the community imploded. The problem is that a soultin like that requires strong architecture leadership, something that is mostly present only in the BSD community - but thery're committted tot he parts and pieces model, and if you don't like gluing them together, you're not worthy.

(As an example of how OSS falls flat, there is just simply *no* acceptable open source calendaring alternative, so I'm even considering the dreaded Exchange server, even though I *hate* it for all the right reasons. Now that the success of my own company is on the line, I can overlook its obvious warts in favor of its out-of-the-box functionality and supportability, neither of which are available in the OSS solutions, which are more like "solution construction kits", with way more than "some assembly required"...)

Maybe not such a good idea...

[dezmund]

This may be a good idea for lesser known and/or specialized programs. I'd love for rankings on Octave/Scilab, so I could finally convince my bosses that we may not need *all* those Matlab licenses. But for religious applications like editors, gui toolkits, scripting languages, etc, it would be hard to get an unbiased sampling of users.

open source rating system

[abes]

What I have wanted for a while, is website where people could comment on the best program to use if you want to do X. It doesn't have to have a *single* best answer, but provide some information, and allow a default setting for people who might feel overwhelmed with choices.

The website would have two modes: consumer, and reviewer. The consumer mode would provide a tree-like interface where you could click choices on what you want to do. A couple of examples would be:
draw->raster->most powerful
draw->vector->simple interface
files->format->mk2fs
publish->math->LaTeX

The reviewer mode would consist of entering a program, and filing it under the catagories you think best. As most projects are moving targets, it would set your comments to a specific version. Based on many people's input, the website would determine which projects each project would most likely fall into (so it can occur in several catagories at once). This also allows a consumer to come along, type in a program she/he uses, and find similiar programs that might fit his/her needs better.

Many systems have way more programs installed than an average (or expert) user knows about. There might very well be a program that can fit your needs, but without proper document/direction, can be difficult to find. Thus, a super-directory of all programs available would be a huge boost to the OSS community.

Re:open source rating system

[StoneCrusher]

Here are the ones I use...

The best ... http://www.linuxsoft.cz/en/
An older one, but still useful http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/tab le.shtml
Even the gentoo package listing is useful http://packages.gentoo.org/categories/

Linux.org, Mandrake, and sourceforge have listings as well. But there should be a really kick ass one that all the linux fans could link to from their homepages.

But will the contributed rating data be open?

[KrisWithAK]

Yes, it is nice to see someone taking a shot at a standard supported by the community to rate (open source) software. From what I took in from the article and related documents, I could not see any concrete indication on how the data will be collected and owned except for inside an example evaluation for Mambo. The license for the example is the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. As it can be plainly seen, one of the sponsors is SpikeSource who has a vested interest in selling "certified" open-source software stacks and update services.

The questions that this project brings up, as well as potentially raise, are:

• Who will be evaluating the software?
• Who will own the evaluation data and what will its license be? (I'm thinking of reasoning behind freedb)
• What if I want to sell my own software stack, and I'd like to give it a composite rating using contributed rating data? Am I out of luck because the data is owned by the openbrr partners?
• Sure the rating matrix is open and standard, but what will be the mechanism in trust in the ratings? (How will we be able to determine the bias in the ratings? For example, what if JBoss contributed a rating for Apache Geronimo? Or more subtly, how would we trust a consulting company that is a "business partner" with MySQL to do a review on another database such as PostgreSQL?
• Perhaps codeZoo being a partner in this effort is an indication that it could become the primary storage location for the rating data? Whoever is going to be the primary distributor for this information will be making a bid to eclipse all the other open-source software portals such as freshmeat.

My take is I won't be interested in participating in a community project where participant contributions are not freely redistributable.

Re:But will the contributed rating data be open?

[ez_spike]

You've got a lot of great points here. It would be great if you could post these in openbrr forum, it's more well directed there. The model is open, the result is open, the data is open. Anyone can use the model to rate anything. If anyone want's to publish a rating, (s)he/it must publish the data as well. Quite easy, quite open and quite objective isn't it?

So exactly what is bad OSS?

[midicase]

OSS is typically born out of one someone's particular need. Specifically it does not exist out of someone else's wants so I am unsure how these "someone else's" could rate someone's particular 'need'. The rating system would effectively be asking "Did someone WANT this software enough to fill MY needs?"

mod parent up

[Kethinov]

it would be ironic. ;)

Meet the Fockers: 9th place ribbons?

[rmallico]

Got me thinking about the 9th place ribbon Gaylord had in the 'shrine'...

rate this...

This is easy, it all sucks

[bigbinc]

Just kidding. I think this is a good idea, but they
should be fare. I would hate a rating system give
every opensource project an A. I predict major grade inflation.

Re:This is easy, it all sucks

[BobTheAtheist]

How much would you charge?

For Adults Only

[Danger Stevens]

"After pressure from Microsoft and organizations representing parents of impressionable young nerds the bash shell has been rated NC-35 in an attempt to keep anyone from using it until they are a confirmed and lonely bachelor"

Rated "M" for Mature

[tuffy]

The best sort of OSS.

Race

[pete-classic]

To register "ismysoftwarehotornot.com"

-Peter

freshmeat

[oo_waratah]

I am wondering how this helps over freshmeat's rating system?

I personally use the slug.org.au rating system, ask at the next meeting how to do something and listen to the responses.

Re:freshmeat

[berbo]

Who determines freshmeat's ratings? Mostly a bunch of developers.

The subject of this article is a system for rating business-readiness, in language that managers can grok. The promise of OSS is not just that its cool, but that its better for the bottom line. OpenBRR measures that.

how do you rate software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like this system allows people to "vote" on each category, basically:

The rating system has 12 categories, including functionality, usability, quality, security, documentation and technical support. Each category is to be rated 1 to 5. There will also be filtering tools so a potential corporate user can specify its most important considerations.

Some of these items are difficult to quantify by the average software user. How about "security"? Won't you just rate as "5/5" any code that you didn't have a problem with recently?? In my mind, a piece of code like qmail rates 5/5, and code like phpBB rates -10/5. However some people might say, well, phpBB brings out patches quickly, so I'll give it a 5.

Actually come to think of it, you can't really "rate" security. It is either secure or not. What does security "3/5" mean??

How about somebody who has done a comprehensive security audit, why does his score count the same as somebody who just downloaded the software and put it on his personal server?

He makes an analogy with restaurant ratings. However rating a restaurant is done in terms of taste, menu, customer service, *apparent* cleanliness, and so on. You can't personally rate a restaraunt in terms of "actual" cleanliness, adherence to city codes, if the cooks wash their hands, if the ingredients are of a high quality, and so on. There are presumably trained city inspectors who rate these more serious issues.

So, I predict this will just be a popularity contest. The popular software will get the high scores.

The open source model is great, however you still need a mechanism OTHER than popularity to rate software. At the end of the day only YOU can assess how good a piece of software is based on your own skills, experience, and needs.

BRR can be a good thing

[TeacherOfHeroes]

Everyone seems to think that can only be a bad thing - not so.

Even if this isnt something that can be accurately measured, its the kind of stuff that managers seem to love, When someone in an IT department somewhere starts pushing for OpenOffice over MS Office, and the higher-ups hum and haw, asking for proof that it can be trusted, they can be pointed to this. It has at least an appearance of legitimacy, and just may go a long way towards convincing people that its OKAY to switch to FOSS.

If the ratings are good.

NO MORE SIMPLE SCALAR DICTATORSHIPS!

[typical]

I am wondering how this helps over freshmeat's rating system?

Why, in a modern day and age, do we have to still have people like this, like freshmeat, and so forth, *still* rating software based on a simple, global, scalar metric?

One of the *best* things that computers can do versus noninteractive tables of ratings is to produce a customized rating!

So, if we have a big "web" of entries, and I rate foo better than baz, and baz better than bar, then someone else can come along and if *they* tend to rate things similar to the way I rate them, my ratings will be one of the more influential indicators in what the ratings generated for them are.

This takes into account the fact that there isn't, say, one *best* FTP client. Okay, some are more completed than others, but no matter how you look at it, there are going to be GNOME people that like gftp, console people that like lftp, and people that like whatever KDE people use for FTP. One isn't *better* than the other, unilaterally -- it's the fact that there are different types of people, that the *person* should also be able to affect the output.

There are a few cases where people are already doing this. Everyone and their brother seems to have caught onto this for music, because everyone recognizes that music tastes are subjective. But because of the "magazine ratings" of yesteryear, the sorts of accolades that people can slap on their packaging and website (4.5 from MacUser!), people are still stuck in this "one rating for everyone" mindset, which is just silly.

What I'd like to see is someone taking a "rate.com" or something like that domain, and letting people freely create entries for items, and let people freely create accounts, and let people provide partial orderings "I like this better than this". Start out with something silly and immediately appealing, like porn preferences ("Have our engine locate the porn that you're most likely to prefer") and music preferences. Then start adding things like software. And, in the process, you gain a *hell* of a sweet preferences database for banner ads at the top. Heck, you could pull a Google -- do such a good job of choosing ads that they're actually useful instead of being an irritant.

How about close source software?

[ngsayjoe]

We need to rate them along side with open source software too. In this way, we can know how sucks OSS is. All u guys out there, STOP supporting open source software. One days, we programmers will be out of jobs if everybody uses open source software. Why the hell there's no open music, open movies, open books, but open source? You idiots making software open must be nuts.

Codified Fanboyism

[angst_ridden_hipster]

Isn't this just going to devolve into fanboy vote scamming?

I mean, if you look at the discussion boards, you see a lot of partisanship along the lines of "Linux Sucks" and "BSD is teh fuxx0r." I see more energy spent surrounding certain software packages in the slamming of competing projects than actual development and improvements. It's not universal, but I see more of it than I'd like.

Also, who do you trust to rate a project? It's authors? Its users? Rabid fanboys of a competing project?

The same problem exists with Zagat, incidentally. Anyone can rate a restaurant, including restaurant owners, investors, competitors, etc. While this doens't matter when there are lots of ratings, the more obscure entries with lower traffic are unreliable.

Oh. And:

The problem with Open Source is that everyone feels necessary to write some diatribe with a sentence starting with "The problem with Open Source is that ..."

Has XYZ Corp offered to pay for a support contract

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a large, multinational corporation which, last year, was looking to throw pretty sizeable amounts of money at someone in order to obtain support contracts on several OSS products -- we're talking contracts which could have been valued in the hundreds of thousands of USD over a nine year period.

We couldn't find anybody willing to sell us a support contract!!!

We talked to Redhat: they said "if it ain't on Linux we're not interested."

We talked to IBM: they said "we can do that but you'll have to pay all our costs to employ several dedicated, full-time employees so we'll have someone who understands those OSS products" (thanks, but I can go hire a dedicated person too and probably for less than IBM's costs).

We asked for referrals from those oh-so-famously-dedicated-to-OSS companies but they didn't know any other companies in the OSS-support business.

Even the biggest OSS projects (other than Linux) don't offer lists of companies who'll support their software so the OSS developers themselves were of no help.

We hunted around the Web for quite some time and couldn't find any other established companies that offer support contracts for OSS products (be realistic, we're not going to commit to spending $300K with some Joe working out of his garage when he might get bored of it in six months and abandon us).

So please stop throwing around B.S. when you clearly have never been on the other side of the fence.

PS: we decided to take a chance on libxml2 anyway and run the risk of having to pay the huge learning costs to allow us to fix any bugs we might find that the key developers might turn out not to be very interested in fixing (something like libxml2 should be way stable, right?) Pfft. Turns out it wasn't designed to handle serious enterprise-size work (apparently GNOME only uses it for small stuff) and its development team isn't very responsive ... so now we're facing the probability of contributing more dollars in staff-time than we would have if we'd bought a commercial product or possibly written our own parser.

Why whould I want to spend more money helping someone else create a well-working OSS product than it would have cost to make my own, particularly when I'll have a better understanding of the one I wrote myself?

Sheesh.

software engineers shouldn't be doing statistics

[jhcarnelian]

Reading the whitepaper, I find that the methodology behind BRR is so poor that it is useless, and may even be harmful.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a general trend now where software engineering researchers are reinventing the wheel in areas like statistics, polling, knowledge management, and artificial intelligence, without having much competency or experience in those areas.

finaly, we will know the truth

[nickgrieve]

vi or emacs, which is better?

Re:finaly, we will know the truth

[ez_spike]

sorry, joe is better.... :)

Missing Category . . .

[Dausha]

Of course, we at /. know that of the 12 categories mentioned as rated categories there is a missing 13th category: interoperability with M$ Windows. If an OS project can't get that '5,' then it's not worth the effort.

Ben

Re:Missing Category . . .

[ez_spike]

compatibility and interoperability is certainly a facet of "Usability." The model is prety good, I promisse!

Re:Missing Category . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

... The need for compatability with Windows would depend on the application.

If we're talking about a specialised tool such as, say, the Linux kernel build system, I'd tend to rank that as quite unimportant. Other tools may need to operate with formats which are standard on the Windows platform, but not Windows itself.

While a word processor without Microsoft Word compatability is much less useful, the same isn't true for all applications.

XML or RDF could make this much more useful

[MCRocker]

The eXcel templates are cute, but a neutral, open XML document format or RDF markup designed to publish the results of this analysis might actually be useful.

As it stands, The BRR system will work wonders for private consultants who would rather produce reports one customer invoice at a time. However, if it was easy to publish the document in a standard format, then you could use google to find out whose ratings of a particular program are most reliable and filter out the flames and over-exuberant raves from the genuine ratings. Add in a system like Blogger to make it easy for people to generate the files for those who aren't comfortable editing raw XML files and using command line ftp uploads and you end up with a wide range of ratings that are distributed and hard to censor. Add a choice of style sheets to make it look pretty and people might even use the system and post ratings on their personal pages, blogs, forum posts or news groups.

Now, if I could only do the same for movie and music ratings and convince google that a special search page would be a good idea then, instead of concentrating all the ratings on private sites like NetFlix and IMDB, we could have a distributed system that is hard to manipulate.

Re:XML or RDF could make this much more useful

[ez_spike]

That's a wonderful idea. We want the model to be open, so open delivery system is certainly good. Please submit great ideas like this in openbrr forum. That way, your ideas get the maximum worth, it will be heard by the committers.

Comparison to proprietary software?

[quanticle]

Yes, but where do Windows, Internet Explorer, and other proprietary pieces of software fit?

Agree with Parent

[Kamiza Ikioi]

"Free software, despite the price, can be confusing and costly for corporations to use. A few freely distributed programs, like the Linux operating system and the Apache Web server, have become well known, but most are still unproved."

Despite the price... can be costly... because they are unproved? So, basically, stay away from unproved cheap software? Thank God I'm buying Windows Vista and running IIS. I mean, if you pay a lot, and a big name backs it, it must be secure, right?

The NYT needs to stop reading MS press releases as sources for stories on non-MS software. All software must be properly scrutinized.

How is open source different? At least you can hire a programmer to review its code. Try reviewing Windows code for stability. No, really, go ahead. I'll be working on the Linux/Apache box if you need me... I've left a CD of HijackThis!, AdAware, and Spybot next to the Windows box in case you run into any problems. I've wrote an "unproven open source" perl script to "net send" spam you if any critical updates are necessary for you to install while you work.

A vignette for illustration...

[kimanaw]

SCENE: The year is 2007. Staff architect Erst Wile Programmer enters the office of low level IT manager P.H.B. Risq'averse.

EW: Boss, I think I've found a great little open source perl script to solve our database reporting issue...

PHB (turns to PC and begins typing): That was "p-e-a-r-l", right ? Sorry, SpikeSource(TM) doesn't report a BRR for it...

EW confused look: Er, no, "p-e-r-l"...

PHB looks anxious, types some more: OK...Perl is OK, but whats the module ?

EW: "Super::Califragilistic"

PHB typing furiously: OK, its listed, but the BRR is only 11.23065. Sorry, our required min BRR is 27.83409.

EW: Wha...?

PHB: BRR. You know, number of downloads, numer of reported errors, number of reporting users, that sort of thing.

EW: But its only been out about 5 months, and its only really relevant to this particular problem we've got...

PHB: Look, E-dub, we have to follow practices and procedures. If we don't, CEO's go to jail, and the insurance company drops us like a bad case of clap. And one requirement is, "Open source software must be a minimum BRR of 27.83409".

EW: But what about...

PHB looks concerned and sympathetic: Look, E-dub, I'd love to help ya, but frankly, I'm not even certain you're allowed to download this software; I'd hate to have to report you to Network admin, so why don't we just pretend this conversation never happened ?

Thats the road BRR leads us down.

I'd love to believe that the BRR was(a) a useful metric that would (b) be used intelligently, but 2.5 decades of experience leads me to believe otherwise.

Furthermore, we've given them the damn source! How about doing something actually useful, like running an automated metric on it (e.g., McCabe testing), or maybe just looking at it ? Apparently, BigBiz isn't satisfied with finding money in the street anymore, they expect someone to pick it up for them, too.

And if you don't like it...

[BobTheAtheist]

Just write your own rating program. After all it is Open Source and choice is good. I would like to see about 50 different rating systems so that the user can choose the rating system he prefers. Then when there are over 100 different rating systems somebody could develop a rating system to rate the different rating systems.

Only 2 categories

[Anonymous Coward]

Suck and crap

Appropriate by whose standards?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

I really don't see an opportunity for objectivity here. Who decides whether a particular open source package is worthy?

For example, I maintain a project that often competes directly with software produced by Carnegie Mellon University. How could it possibly get a good rating?

Ok, ok, RTFA and you'll see that everyone contributes, you say. Yes, but then you have the groupthink effect. Slashdot is the perfect example of this, where the level of groupthink and popularity contests are surpassed only by high schools. How can a high quality but relatively unknown software project possibly survive that kind of intellect-free non-scrutiny?

Re:Appropriate by whose standards?

[ez_spike]

Maybe an easy way for objectivity is for you to be a sponsor! Anyway, it's an open model, any rating that is published must include the data. For open source projects, the data is also open. You can see that open model is way more objective than a black box rating.

Do they?

[MajorB]

Now they need a ratings system to tell them that the 2005 Madrake LE sucks? Geez...

IT ALL SUCKS

[Anonymous Coward]

open sore software is written by faggot zealot monkeys with a sweaty grip on whorevald's teeny little cock. open sore software is some of the shittiest code ever written by untalented faggot monkeys.

Re:software engineers shouldn't be doing statistic

[ez_spike]

Ehm, would you like to point out these weaknesess? The model is open, that means it is open for changes. It is still in RFC state. We would love to hear experts like you to chip in. Please posts your ideas in openbrr forum.

Too late

[AvantLegion]

If you execute a specific elisp file at a key time, emacs displays a very graphic mini-game involving Richard Stallman. As a responsible parent, I want to make sure that this sort of thing isn't seen by my children when I'm not watching them.

If your kid's gotten into emacs, you've already lost the parenting battle.

Oh hooray...

[scott_karana]

Just what we need; Deviantart for software! Brilliant! :rolleyes:

My thesis does the same thing

[Compgirl]

My Master Thesis which will be published in about three weeks does almost the exact same thing. I've constructed a model with 8 criteria that are used to rate Open Source software. The goal of the model is to explain what makes Open Source software unique and what things you have to look for in an Open Source project (things like community, documentation, security, etc).

I got beaten to the punch with this one.. I do think my model has something to add to this though.

Anyone interested should check my website at http://www.karinvandenberg/ at the end of august, I'll post an announcement there when my thesis is published.

Re:My thesis does the same thing

[Compgirl]

Woops, that's http://www.karinvandenberg.nl/

Re:My thesis does the same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone interested should check my website at http://www.karinvandenberg.nl/ at the end of august, I'll post an announcement there when my thesis is published.

Hell, why not submit it to slashdot as a story?

Re:I RATE SLASHCODE THE BIGGEST FAGWARE OF THEM AL

[Anonymous Coward]

omfg i think i love you and your underrated mod.

Ivory Tower Approach

[apelicanwatcher]

Trying to over analyse a software project could be very harmful, but the need for information is real. Never Analyse a project unless developers want it to be analysed. How about a KISS method. Who are you ( company name) ? How do you use it ? Is it reliable ? How large a database or how freq is it used.

Censorship.

[Anonymous Coward]

Any rating open standard is welcome, this will be usefull against any censorship, like the scores used by slashdot moderators, that use their scores as a way of censorship when they disagree of any comment posted here.
Sorry guys, you haven't published their standards, or better, you don't have standards.

Re:Oh No! - PC track and Field Competition.

[zotz]

I propose that the current form of sports competition is as harmful to the children as letter grades and streaming and holding back.

We need to put up high curtains between the lanes and have individual finishing areas. This way not child will be made to feel inferior when they realise that they cannot run as fast as other children.

I know this will be a damper for the spectators, but what can we do? Think of the children.

all the best,

drew

A different take on this...

[LibrePensador]

The truth is that you don't understand how or why people use open source software.

You are the ultimate reviewer because you can download it for free, test it on your hardware, see if it really meets the needs of your organization without the pressures of trial software or of a vendor looking over your shoulder.

The age of organic IT has arrived, which is the age of real IT. In five years time, people will not buy into the marketing drivel that often promises the earth with very little in situ quantifiable evidence.

Open Source software gives you the ultimate support peace of mind. Anyone can support it and lots of people will.

Under the guise of reasonableness, you are still spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. More so, because there is nothing specific in your post that detracts points from open source. Quite on the contrary, access to the app and the source is the ultimate test environment and the optimal support environment.

Re:A different take on this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. We use and produce software ( where I work ). The OSS stuff is great because we can look at it, draft a patch and get a release the same day in some cases (sometimes a LOT longer :), but hey we do get it ). We can also see that in some cases the code is just terrible and the ppl that wrote it are not good at what they do, and in that case save ourselves time and money not going down that road. Try that with proprietary code. The original parent has no idea what they are talking about and shows.

It's True!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just type:
'M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead' ;-)

Open source rating

[wh00dini]

Shouldn't the system itself be open source, this way when they rate my application shit, I can just go in an "mod" it up?

Re:Rather ironic... touching several topics here..

[davidsyes]

A rather telling indicator of what many employers think about ms office is:

"Please do NOT send your resume as an attachment; rather, please send as text, in the body of the message."

Some don't even want .pdf files. Why? In almost every instance (ok, in a number of them) where I've seen this request, they specifically say this measure is to avoid a virus attack. Some places even ask for fax or paper resumes. So much for anti-virus tools and ms office, particularly with ms word having vb and other useless junk turned on by default. It will be QUITE a while before all those previously endangered installs are cleaned up by IT departments, either due to serendipity or some major patch that ONLY turns off the dangerous features and which doesn't require a 550 MB download to do shit ms should have fixed before letting the malignant horse out the gate.

As for Open Source apps, yeh, I think we need something that showcases the BEST, not the half-baked stuff. One section for purely command line stuff, and one for GUI/Eye-Candy stuff. I think a blending of Linux.org and Sourceforge:

http://www.linux.org/apps/index.html

http://sourceforge.net/index.php

but with thumbnails of the stuff showing something other than a desktop and kicker. The activity stats need to be there, and it would be nice if many of these corporations that secretly crave cheaper software costs would actually openly and/or silently donate via PayPal or some mechanism they consider to be low-risk to them.

Actually, these corporations and donors should take the politics out of the process, remove the chance of ms infiltrating them, and make the donations easier and pain-free (relatively) by setting up a line item in their budget, sort of to help foster or steer the development of a given or favored project.

Many sites do ask for donations, but it's saddening that so many promising projects wither or languish and then die due to lack of interest or worse, a lack of resources. I don't propose that every bottom-feeding/leech-like weed of a project get funded. There needs to be merit, uniqueness, and viability and future sustainability in a supported project for it to receive funding.

Many Open Source and mixed/dual license apps, however, could signal the death knell for many proprietary, stodgy, intransigent companies which make nice, but astronomically (elitism?, cache? status?, exclusivity?, branding?) priced apps and suites that could be broken down into low-, medium- and upper-end pricing to gain a bigger footprint in the market. Maybe they could even do what some of the food and tire makers do: spin off or distribute excess lots or lesser-capable versions of a product through another entity or subdivision. Not every company can afford to divide this way, but the current and foreseeable economy will continue forcing companies and inventors to reinvent themselves or die at the hands of steadily improving free (cost or licensing) and proprietary (low-cost and costly) software.

Another way software can be exposed is simply if IBM and others finally pull the ms probiscus out of their rears. We need, DESPERATELY, some major companies with backbone who'll create or support an infrastructure through which low-cost laptops can be deployed for rent, lease, sale, or barter (social work, tutoring, community cleanup, use your imagination) and which have Open Source-friendly tools loaded on them. I'm not talking about 2 GHz, nor 400 MHz laptops. They could be highly-optimized 800 MHz-1 GHz laptops (how many hundreds of thousands of these things must be still in boxes, in inventory, or going to secondary markets, or returned and destroyed rather than kept floating on the market?) meant for kids to use at school, on the bus, and in other places. They're lugging some 15-25 pounds of books now, and the paper industry needs to be forced down or compelled to take their monkeys off the spines of grow

Regurgitated

[msimm]

The fact is I use both proprietary and Open software in both my personal and profession work every day. I'm a systems administrator so I'm in a fairly good position to see what its like from a business prospective.

The idiom "anyone can support it" cuts right down to the problem with the OSS idealist. Do businesses really want to have to support it? But more importantly, do they want to bet their short, long or mid-term strategies on it?

This is exactly why Redhat does so well. In a year, they'll be here. In another year? They'll be here. In 5? Thats the kind of security business needs and part of the reason free or open in and of themselves doesn't really seem to be panacea you might think it is.

Your FUD comment is laughable. I'm not spreading fear, I'm encouraging realism. There are no sides. This is software, no matter what your idealogy. I'm simply trying to explain business.

The propsed reviews could be a win-win. Personally I don't see whats wrong with that.

At some point you need to..

[msimm]

come down off your moral high-ground and really take a good long look. Its not perfect, but then its not so bad either.

Ratings???

[Austin Milbarge]

OK. I've got some ratings ideas... We could do it just like the movies (ie. Rated PG, R, PG-13)

How about...

Rated DFC - Doesn't F@#king Compile (not permitted in working environment)
Rated JARGSS - Just Another Retarted GUI Screen Scraper (The "real console program" is also required and all that is needed)
Rated TMHNTC - Too Many Helpers Needed To Compile (bash, yacc, perl, autoconf, python, etc)
Rated WORT - Waste of Router's Time (don't even bother clicking the download link)
Rated DS - Documentation Sucks (use only if you like reading uncommented and messy code)
Rated TMSD - Too Many Stupid Dependencies (requires 9,000 x.so files that you probably don't have)
Rated ROB - Requires O'Reilly Book (trip to Borders highly recommended)
Rated POD - Pillow On Desk (so you don't hurt your head when you slam it)
Rated SRFIPD - Small Readme File Is Program's Documentation (same as Rated DS)
Rated MAWLHTETOCF - Might As Well Learn How To Edit The Original Config Files (same as Rated JARGSS)

The Next Problem

[jtorkbob]

So soon there will be dozens of these OSS rating organizations. I am acting in advance and creating the Open Association for Rating Readiness Rating Standards Associations (O.A.R.R.R.S.A.) I give these guys, a 5. They need a Java menu and some animated GIFs.