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The Birth of a FOSS Application

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-video-squeamish-need-not-worry dept.

Joe Barr writes "Brice Burges explains why and how he created a new free software application, as well as what he learned from the birthing process, in a story on Linux.com. The story provides first-hand insights into the frustrations and satisfactions of developers working on free/open source projects. From the article: 'I'm always disappointed to hear open source project members say that they had "their developer" modify an aspect of the program without ever hearing from that developer or seeing any of the code. This is not progressive.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

6 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. Free != freedom by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Open Source need not mean that the project is open to allcomers. The projects that work tend to be managed by dictators (eg Linus). I currently work on 2 major open source projects and have done some minor work on others. Those that are run as democratic communal projects tend to lose their fiocus and crash onto rocks.

    No different from any other software development really.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
    1. Re:Free != freedom by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Free in FOSS indeed means freedom. Even though many successful projects are run by "dictators" or committees, not by a democracy of all developers, nobody can stop you from making changes yourself. There is a difference between "the" Linux kernel and "a" Linux kernel, and the Free in FOSS means you can have your Linux kernel and other people can have other Linux kernels. The project may not be open to all, but the product, the source code, certainly is.

    2. Re:Free != freedom by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Funny

      True enough, but if I have to choose between, say, the Linus-approved Linux kernel and Joe Schmoe's Kernel That He Made From The Linux Kernel But Added Some Stuff Joe Thought Was Cool, I know which one I'll go with. ;)

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  2. Different projects, different styles by jd · · Score: 5, Insightful
    There is no all-encompasing style for Open Source, Free Software, or any other variety of the beastie. There is no Universal Way, no Grand Master Plan that all must follow, and no guaranteed recipe for either success or failure. There is only code, tended to by a cooperative under the policies of that cooperative, for no benefit other than the scratching of a collective itch.

    One of the very reasons the term "Open Source" was so heavily slammed in the early days was that it meant too many damn things to too many people (some of whom might also be damned). People, as a whole, adopted it despite those objections and often belittled those who raised them. Now we're finding out that some of those same people are finding out that Open Source does indeed too many different things to too many people, and that people really are trying to achieve different results. Congratulations. Should I break into applause or just do a Kerr Avon impression and throw these people out the airlock?

    --
    It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  3. Nice Checklist by jlarocco · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The checklist on the lower right is probably the best part of the article. It's all pretty obvious stuff when you think about it, but nice to have it all listed.

    --
    Maybe not
  4. How much effort should a person go to? by deranged+unix+nut · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I ran into an annoying little bug with Perl Win32::SoundRec, figured out how to fix it, patched my own system, and then spent 30 minutes trying to find info on where to submit the fix. I finally emailed the author and got no response. Months later, the bug is still there. The fix is three lines of code and two extra calculations.

    I had some crashes with Mozilla and tried to get symbols, it turns out that the release build doesn't have published symbols so my effort to repro a stress bug and capture it in windbg was wasted.

    In the pre-1.0 kernel days, I had problems getting two 3c509 nics to work in a box at the same time. With the help of a friend, we made a 3c509-2 driver by copying and changing all of the identifiers. The hack worked, but it was a hack. At the time, I didn't take the time to report the limitation anywhere or investigate further.

    So, when I as a 99.9% user tries that 0.1% of the time to contribute, why is it always a pain? I would love to contribute. If the bar were lower, if I could take a 1-line fix and get someone to pay attention, or if I could take that bug and get support in debugging it other than "compile it yourself", I am sure my contribution rate would quadruple.

    Maybe a college student has enough time to spend decyphering how to contribute. I don't have that much time anymore.