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Unusual Open Source
Dumitru Erhan writes "The Economist has a special report on open-source. It analyzes the way open-source projects succeed and finds that a rigid, business-like organizational structure is of vital importance to the quality of the final product. It cites Firefox, MySQL and (more recently) Wikipedia as examples of projects that do not simply allow anarchy to rein in, but which have 'real checks and balances, and real leadership taking place'. There is also a discussion of open-source methods being applied to non-software projects." From the article: "Constant self-policing is required to ensure its quality. This lesson was brought home to Wikipedia last December, after a former American newspaper editor lambasted it for an entry about himself that had been written by a prankster. His denunciations spoke for many, who question how something built by the wisdom of crowds can become anything other than mob rule."
PJ over at Groklaw http://www.groklaw.net/ has this story.
The reporter interviewed her. She has his questions and her answers. He obviouly ignored what she told him and printed a story full of factual innacuracies.
This is bad, bad reporting. Do I still trust the Economist? Not much.
From Wikipedia:
"Anarchism as a political philosophy, is the belief that rulers, governments, and hierarchal social relationships are unnecessary and should be abolished, although there are differing interpretations of what this means."
Sounds like another one of those -isms that people have adopted and modified from its true original meaning to make themselves feel different, like Satanism. Anarchy means chaos and lack of organization. Oxford says "a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority."
"ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: via medieval Latin from Greek anarkhia, from anarkhos, from an- 'without' + arkhos 'chief, ruler.'"
"Sufferin' succotash."
Except that anarchism, as a philosophy, has a serious theoretical basis in the works of Kropotkin, Bakunin, Proudhon, etc, which date back centuries.
Sorry, your Oxford dictionary is the definition that has been modified from its true original meaning.
Sorry, but you don't seem to know what you're talking about.
Kropotkin was born in 1842, Bakunin in 1814, and Proudhon in 1809, right? Well, the OED provides citations for "anarchy" in the sense of "lawlessness" dating back to 1539, and for "anarchy" in the sense of "moral or intellectual disorder" dating back to 1656.
If we assume that words have such a thing as a "true original meaning", then I would be inclined to say that the way the word was used in 1539 (and is still most commonly used today) is more likely to be the "true original meaning" than the way the word was used by a handful of philosphers in the 1850s. Unless you're about to propose that they invented the time machine as well?
Yes, well said. However, it's worth pointing out that lots of free software is developed with good practices. Probably more free software developers use version control systems and bug ticketing than proprietary development processes. It's well established I think, that Free Software code is more conscientiously checked and validated before being submitted and committed to the mainline code base. Moreover, we have free tools available for all sorts of things, like code testing, vulnerability discovery, etc., along with lots of documentation and discussion about how that is useful, and how to actually use it.
This is giving way too much credit to SCO's claims. I don't think it was ever proved that a single line owned by SCO was found in Linux. As I recall they were basing their claims on free lines of BSD which were added to both SCO and Linux.
And after the furore over the biographical entry last year, Wikipedia changed its rules so that only registered users can edit existing entries
This is simply wrong. Anonymous users can and always have been able to edit existing articles.
Well, this article is still pretty decent but I expect better from The Economist.
To be honest, we can just disregard what they say entirely, when this reporter can not even get their facts right. Consider this *one* paragraph (my comments inlined): "As problems of vandalism, prejudice and inaccuracy ensued, Mr Wales was reluctant to clamp down. In the end, he had to."
Err, no. Wikipedia has gotten more accurate over time; our early articles were vastly worse and more prejudiced, and vandalism has gone down as our software tools have gotten better and popup reversions, rollbacks, vandal fighters, and more people all assist in removing them. The only factor going up was Wikipedia's visibility- Seigenthaler-type affairs were a dime a dozen in early Wikipedia entries or in vandalism, period. The only thing different in his case was that he had a national pulpit to abuse us from.
"The site has set down policies to mediate debates; it has banished unco-operative contributors;"
We've always done that. The first users were banished within a few months of the beginning of the project.
"-it locked down entries that were frequently vandalised (such as one on George Bush)--changes come only from contributors who are designated as leaders on the strength of their work."
We *sometimes* lock them down, and we rarely these days full-protect them (I'm going to assume here that these "leaders" are admins); it's almost always semi-protection these days, which allows >95% of editors to edit'em.
"A blunt new policy was promulgated: "Don't be a dick.""
Was promulgated? WP:DICK is more than a year old, and it isn't policy either.
"And after the furore over the biographical entry last year, Wikipedia changed its rules so that only registered users can edit existing entries,-"
Er... right. I'll remember that the next time I edit an biographical article anonymously.
"and new contributors must wait a few days before they can start new ones."
Nope; just plain wrong. You have to be a registered user to start an article, but the moment you register, you can start creating articles to your heart's content.
These are only some of the errors; we'll ignore the graph (saying we have *3* million articles is to do violence to the meaning of the word article; it is only slightly less dishonest to state that we have three million entries without specifying how only about one million are anywhere near solid enough to merit the word article) and other problematic statements and assertions. What they have to say on Wikipedia is error prone enough, I simply cannot trust the rest of the article.
~Maru