What's Wrong With the FOSS Community?

An anonymous reader writes "Patrick McFarland, one of the major Free Software Magazine authors, has completed his second article on whats wrong with the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) community, and what we face in this world. He touches on ESR's Cathedral and the Bazaar essay briefly, and warns against cherry-picking style software development."

Comments

Re:You know what the funny thing is?

[ookaze]

You know what the funny thing is? That people are stuck on assuming a Bazaar model, and Bazaar methodologies [...] when basically it doesn't work like that any more

You know what the funny thing is ? It still works like that nowadays, and you are on a crusade to destroy that view. Not that it will do any harm, but I wonder what is your agenda.

The bazaar model still worked when the pinnacle of software complexity were "cat" and "vi". That's it

And yet, lots of projects like X11 implementations, Utopia, most freedesktop.org projects, most basic toolchains, Gnome and KDE works like that ...

It stopped working almost completely when complexity meant Open Office Org

Here comes the wrong example : OOo never was Bazaar style developed to begin with, and Sun makes all it can so that it doesn't.
Like I said, it still works for things like KOffice and Gnome Office.

The Asperger's Syndrome kind of coder (and I'm one, so I can make fun of myself if I want to) which finds more joy in coding something cool instead of going out and flirting with a girl

Stop the BS please. What is an Asperger's Syndrome kind of coder BTW ?
An Asperger's Syndrome person would never "make fun of" himself, he would'nt know how, and this wouldn't have any purpose in his mind.
You're far from what you say you are.

also has a very narrow focus of attention and gets bored easily when he must deal with stuff either (A) outside that focus, or (B) which is basically homework instead of getting to the cool stuff

BS again. An Asperger's Syndrome don't get bored at what he does, he just find it completed or not.

Spending weeks understanding someone else's framework and code before you can even start on your cute "number paragraphs in Klingon" idea, is boring, and it's even more boring to understand and test all dependencies so you don't break something else

What do you mean ? What is the connection with Asperger's Syndrome kind of coder ? Do you mean all FOSS people are these kind of people ?
It's well hidden, but that's the worst troll I ever read :
- So all the projects are like that ?
- Why would you spend weeks understanding someone else's framework ?
- How do you know nobody enjoys that ?
- What is this nonsense about testing dependancies to not break something else ? (that must be the worst nonsense in all your sentence)
And finally, how can someone put so much red herring, straw men and unfounded facts in one sentence ?

So today in F/OSS the only ones making any progress nowadays are, sad to say, the Cathedrals

How did you come to this conclusion exactly ? Why is this sad ? Are you here to find out if the Cathedral is better than the Bazaar ?

Yes, everyone likes to use the Linux kernel and such as an example of why the Bazaar is strong, but have a look at the actual contributors some day. It's _not_ bored nerds like you and me working in their free time. Most of them are paid employees of Red Hat, IBM, etc.

What ? Did you expect all these brilliant people to remain unemployed or what ? Did you actually believe people contributing to a kernel were mostly not working in IT ?
Did you think most of RH was marketing ? Who even told you that contributors to the Linux kernel were "bored nerds" ?
Again, how can someone put so much straw men and red herring in so little space ?
What tells you most RH devs don't work in a bazaar style too ? One would think you assume company == Cathedral.

Linux as the work of bored nerds in their free time was a security shithole until Red Hat spent some real money doing a code and security review. And it was a joke in the enterprise arena until IBM started pumping some real money and formerly Cathedral-developped closed-source code into it. There's a reason why IBM looked like a believable target to SCO, and that's the sheer quantity of Aix code that IBM donated

You need some serious history check and

Heh

[Moraelin]

It still works like that nowadays, and you are on a crusade to destroy that view. Not that it will do any harm, but I wonder what is your agenda.

Heh. At the "everyone who isn't with us, is part of some evil conspiracy against us" stage? Don't worry. I went through that stage myself. But eventually growing up kind of sneaks upon you, you know? You start realizing that there are no knights in shining armour and no super-villains cackling manically over death-ray plans. And that you're not really the one who'll save the world from MS. That pretending that the problems don't exist is actually counter-productive and doesn't actually help anyone. In fact, it only does more harm than good. And a lot of other such common-sense, really.

And in a nutshell that's my only "agenda": not really as much of an agenda, as just realizing that the whole fanboy crusade is stupid and pointless. Acknowledging the Real World (TM) instead of living in some imaginary crusader-fanboy world.

At any rate, heh, feel free to believe whatever floats your boat. If imagining me as part of some evil MS-sponsored conspiracy makes you feel any better, by all means, go ahead.

Here comes the wrong example : OOo never was Bazaar style developed to begin with, and Sun makes all it can so that it doesn't.

Bingo. That was my whole point actually. The only one that's anywhere _near_ a usable state is a Cathedral-type product.

Like I said, it still works for things like KOffice and Gnome Office.

And they're still a sad joke that noone would mistake for a real substitute for or challenge to MS Office. They took _ages_ to get anywhere _near_ where the Cathedral products got in a fraction of that time. Star Office in the 90's, before the Sun purchase, was less of a joke than KOffice and Gnome Office still are. That's just my point: that's what complexity does to Bazaar-style projects.

An Asperger's Syndrome person would never "make fun of" himself, he would'nt know how, and this wouldn't have any purpose in his mind.

It may surprise you, but a lot of us eventually learn how to function in society in spite of AS. It's a bit like fighting blind, but you eventually learn to use logic and think in advance. Or at least, some of us do. There are, of course, also those who get stuck on acting like a retarded kid who wants a lollypop. But not everyone does.

You're far from what you say you are.

Heh. I'll take it as a compliment if I passed well enough for a neurotypical, then.

But again, feel free to think whatever you will. If you don't believe me, so be it. I'm not going to turn this into a psychoanalysis session to convince a random person on the Internet than I'm a bit deffective.

BS again. An Asperger's Syndrome don't get bored at what he does, he just find it completed or not.

Read some medicine books, lemming. AS is characterized by a very narrow focus of interest. Yes, an AS is pretty much tireless at doing the parts that interest him, but is also extremely quick to get bored by stuff that falls outside that focus or by stuff that looks more like routine uninteresting homework even _within_ his focus of interest. Someone could be tireless at hacking the interesting cool algorithms or optimizations in a program, but lose interest quickly when you make him polish the user interface. Or other such combinations of "I like A, but B is dumb, and A1 is too trivial to interest me".

What do you mean ? What is the connection with Asperger's Syndrome kind of coder ? Do you mean all FOSS people are these kind of people ?

I've never said "all", did I? There are a lot of those who are just paid to work on those project. Which was in fact my whole point.

But lot of those who do devote inordinate amounts of their own