More MS, Less Talent In Open Source's Future

alphadogg writes "The open source industry in 2008 will be marked by more news out of Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and other big IT vendors, less start-up funding, more M&A activity, and an increasingly serious talent shortage, according to Raven Zachary, open source research director for The 451 Group. One example of the talent shortage will be people with expertise in the Tomcat open source Java servlet middleware from the Apache Foundation. 'There are 25 or so core contributors to that project,' Zachary said. 'Over the past four or five years that number has stayed virtually [unchanged]... but the growth of Tomcat has been astronomical.'"

Comments

Talent shortage?

[RandoX]

Maybe talented coders like to get paid better.

Re:Talent shortage?

[wwmedia]

u mean not all programmers like to give away their work and answer support questions for free with their open source software?

Re:Talent shortage?

[RHSC]

I prefer to get paid by the semicolon...just so long as I don't have to code in VB

Re:Talent shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously that would be paid per line of code lol

Re:Talent shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect this issue is more complex than simply pay. Younger programmers have the time to work on projects (and tend to love doing it) because they don't have families and basically "live to code". For those of us a bit older, with wives, families, kids in college, etc. there simply isn't time to donate to worth-while projects, nor is there ever enough money (see kids in college above) to donate anything.

It is truly unfortunate that programmers of my generation aren't as prone to participate because they bring a much broader and deeper experience if for no other reason than years of working in the industry.

Re:Talent shortage?

[lorenzino]

please mod parent funny! :)

Re:Talent shortage?

[wizardforce]

there's nothing in gnu saying you can't indirectly make money from software, you just can't redistribute code that is derived from gnu code in a propietary way. Canonical I hear makes about 50 million a year through support and indirect revenue sources from Ubuntu

Re:Talent shortage?

[MenTaLguY]

Absolutely. But Open Source gives you the freedom to do things the way you want to, and it's a good way to interact with a population of other talented coders, both of which are generally hard to get consistently in the commercial world. Both are things that talented coders care about a lot more than the folks who are just in it for the money, clocking in the hours and punching in the first code that dribbles out of their brain.

It's more a question of having the spare time for it.

Re:Talent shortage?

[PrescriptionWarning]

not all open source is derived from hobby work ya know... some of it is designed by programmers of 'your' generation because it was a part of what they did for pay.

Re:Talent shortage?

[argiedot]

Agreed. In fact, the poster child Linux was mostly written by people paid to write for it.

Re:Talent shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Unfortunately, support and consulting are arguably the least desirable way to make money in this sort of industry. Ideally, you'd sell product and get only positive feedback to improve it. No support. No dumb questions. No issues.

Companies that make money from support contracts are, in my opinion, doing the least favorable work. It's certainly not sexy and for every dollar you earn, you have to work an amount directly proportional to that. There's not much concept of exponential growth. In other words, your income per hour flattens out much faster than with a product-based model.

Re:Talent shortage?

[morgan_greywolf]

I like to get paid by leading whitespace -- syou know, paces and tabs (with tabs counting as at least 4 spaces). But then again, I'm a Python programmer.

Re:Talent shortage?

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

not all open source is derived from hobby work ya know

Perhaps, but you're missing his point. Here's another example:

• Wake up around 6 am. Eat, get dressed, and get physched up for the fun fun hour plus drive via major congested roads to get to work by 9am. That pre-leave time also includes helping get my Son ready for School (breakfast, persistant reminders that he's running late, etc.).
• Work 'till 5pm (usually closer to 6 pm).
• Fun fun hour plus drive home. Home around 7 pm.
• Eat dinner, help Son with homework, spend a bit of time with him before his bed time.
• Spend sometime with Wife and un-wind a bit (and "un-wind", if you catch my drift...)
• Shower, go over meeting notes, maybe catch the the earlier late news).
• 10pm Head to bed.

Where in there am I supposed to find time to sit in front of my machine spending hours debugging code for an OSS project? I'm not saying that I don't contribute, once in a while I have sometime on weekends to submit a bug report (with some same code usually - but not always), or something small like that, but by far and large, us "older" (I'm only 34, but...), "Family Guys" simply don't have the time the younger people (in High School or College) do.

That was his point, I think.

Re:Talent shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you! Finally, it seems that someone understands why many of us roll our eyes whenever someone claims that the "support model" is what's going to drive open source to the top of the pile, or that it's the "future" of software. It's an extremely undesirable job (in terms of obtaining and keeping good employees), and proportional (at best) growth will never have new entrants salivating to get into the market.

Re:Talent shortage?

[wizardforce]

it is however a sustainable model that doesn't normally alienate your user base like Microsft's business model does. You don't get bad PR from treating your user base like criminals, they jsut get to use the software as they like, you get a sustainable cash flow that doesn't require you to spend a great deal of it attacking your user base for daring to actually use your software. it is by design, favorable for that software to get copied as many times as is possible, more eyes to help improve the code and make it better over time as well as future support.

Re:Talent shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the companies who have to ditch Linux altogether as an embedded platform because with GPL v3, corporate secrets must be given to the customer on request.

For example, a CNC machine that has a corporate secret blueprint to produce optimal engine parts that is sold to a customer. Under the GPL v3, the customer by request can get all that info, and is permitted to distribute the trade secrets as he/she sees fit.

Yes, Tivoization is bad, but all the GPL v3 did is just get people to run back to MS and other closed source providers for fear of unwarranted lawsuits, or fear of giving away hard-won corporate assets.

The nasty thing about GPL v3, if one single library is under that license (as opposed to LGPL) and is built into a project, the whole project is tainted, and is unusable for commercial entities.

Re:Talent shortage?

[RHSC]

Getting paid by the parenthesis while coding LISP is good too

Re:Talent shortage?

[Reverend528]

Maybe the talented coders just don't like Java. It's entirely possibly that a shortage of tomcat coders will correspond to a surplus of rails developers.

Google trends seems to agree with this theory

Re:Talent shortage?

[kdemetter]

so don't use GLPv3 . There are plenty of other open source licenses . It's not because the FSF makes a new one that you have to use that. There is no good or bad license in there , it just depends on your needs . I don't think there's a talent shortage , it's more like a shortage of new ideas . Basically , if you think of an application you could use , there's a good chance it already exists . And it's a lot more fun working on something you helped create , than on improving something someone else wrote .

Re:Talent shortage?

[eggnoglatte]

This must be the first time I have heard somebody call the MS business model unsustainable. Sure, it isn't very nice, but unsustainable? How exactly did they end up in that dominant market position for close to the last 2 deceades, then?

Re:Talent shortage?

[yason]

Companies that make money from support contracts are, in my opinion, doing the least favorable work. It's certainly not sexy and for every dollar you earn, you have to work an amount directly proportional to that. There's not much concept of exponential growth. In other words, your income per hour flattens out much faster than with a product-based model.

It pays to do work that nobody else wants to do.

Further, I don't think there will be "exponential growth" (or scalable sales...) in the future software industry. It was there in the 80's or 90's but not really any longer. Even larger software systems are becoming a commodity - it started with that you can no longer just write a word processor or a spreadsheet, sell the box 10^n times and earn the money as many times. Now you can't do that even with an operating system since no O/S is special enough anymore. (Apple can, for a while, since there's more glittering design and brand than software for sale in there. Microsoft has failed for years already.)

These days you sell or give away your software to support your primary business (services, expertise, solutions like IBM, or monopoly like Microsoft) or you have some highly complex niche product like a physics modelling suite, where few copies are sold but they're worth a huge money. No exponential growth in there either. Then there are few old gamers like Adobe's Photoshop and like that have built up steam to keep rolling for a little longer because they're really good for the minority of computer users that really need a full-featured image processor.

It is getting to sound like a very good idea to, instead of writing software, take the software for free, then make it better, share it back for the next round, and sell support.

Re:Talent shortage?

[wizardforce]

You could have said the same thing about Apple years ago and now look at them. In Microsoft's case, their last OS was by many accounts an engineering and planning failure, only their market position saved them on this one. It is suspected that Microsft's failure in managing their code development teams is crippling their ability to actually do anything, take a look at Vista, 6 years of development for that piece of trash. Unless they start cracking on actually producing something it's going to bite them in their collective posteriors in time.

Re:Talent shortage?

[KutuluWare]

Clearly, the answer is to produce and support an open source product until it becomes wildly popular, then systematically introduce subtle but severe bugs that force everyone who runs your software to pay for your support contracts :)

Re:Talent shortage?

[Tikkun]

I'm not a professional programmer, but I've been known to help out OSS in other ways. Here's my schedule:

- Wake up at 6am, eat, get dressed, drive to work.
- Work from 7:30am to 4:00pm supporting software, then go home.
- 5:00pm - 6:00pm, eat food, read some RSS feeds.

At this point all I really have to do until 11:00pm is study, code, or help out people in forums and IRC. And this doesn't even include the fun I get to have on the weekends, but YMMV.

Re:Talent shortage?

[dvice_null]

> Where in there am I supposed to find time to sit in front of my machine spending hours debugging code for an OSS project?

"We" have the same amount of time what everyone else has. It is just how we want to spent it.

For example I moved to very close to my current work place when I started working there. It takes about 10 minutes for me to get to work and I don't even have to use a car for that. I save probably 10 hours every week compared to you. That is something like 500 hours every year (+ I save a lot of environment and money at the same time).

I like to think that my skills are too valuable to be wasted in traffic jams every day. I would ever turn down a job, if I couldn't move close enough to it. You obviously have different priorities, which are probably better than mine. But you really can't claim that you would have less time than anyone else. (I also have a wife, child, job and I spent my free time on Slashdot and with open source projects.)

Re:Talent shortage?

[Reverend528]

there's nothing in gnu saying you can't indirectly make money from software

There's nothing in the GPL saying you can't directly make money from software.

Re:Talent shortage?

[jackpot777]

It pays to do work that nobody else wants to do.

...and that's why the best jobs (to borrow from comedian Stephen Lynch), are:

1 - landscaping

2 - dishwashing

3 - picking our fruit

Re:Talent shortage?

[sumdumass]

That is actually the domino effect they were looking for that would hopefully push everyone to the GPLv3 license. Think of it as a forced upgrade. Remember all the talk about Getting Novell and Microsoft because the FSF would move everything to GPLv3 as soon as possible and MS nor Novel would be able to escape the reach of the GPLv3?

And yes, it is forced because you have the option of continuing to use your product and having it become incompatible or having to fork what ever library that moves and take on the responsibility and hassles of maintaining it. Of course there is the options of going to the GPLv3 license like they want, but if you are being forced then you didn't really pick that option did you?

Re:Talent shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

You un-wind *before* taking a shower? You filthy, filthy man. You should shower before... and after.

Re:Talent shortage?

[QuantumG]

I have no kids and I work from home.

Re:Talent shortage?

[ClosedSource]

"But Open Source gives you the freedom to do things the way you want to, and it's a good way to interact with a population of other talented coders, both of which are generally hard to get consistently in the commercial world."

Sure, because a group of people who all get to do things the way they want to do it are known to be more talented and accomplished than an organized team creating products for paying customers.

Re:Talent shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

if they use that code to hinder the modification of modified gnu source code than yes GPLv3 would prevent that, if their code was a seperate entity that in no way affected the modification of modified gnu code then there is by design, no problem. Tivo allowed you to view the source but not to modify it for your own use on their hardware, that would be considered anti-ethical to software freedom. Then again there's nothing preventing said company from using BSD code or writing their own code for the job nor does it prevent Torvalds from keeping Linux under GPLv2 or forking it for those that wish to do so.

Yes, Tivoization is bad, but all the GPL v3 did is just get people to run back to MS and other closed source providers for fear of unwarranted lawsuits, or fear of giving away hard-won corporate assets.

wait what? are you fscking kidding me? need I remind you that you can't really modify MS code because it is closed source? quit spreading FUD troll

Re:Talent shortage?

[MenTaLguY]

You don't believe that talented people gravitate towards environments which offer them creative freedom?

Whether Open Source is more or less productive is a separate issue (I don't believe it is more productive in the short-term).

Re:Talent shortage?

[einhverfr]

What makes you think that programmers don't get paid to work on FOSS?

BTW, if you know Perl and/or PLPGSQL, and want to work on FOSS business software (especially accounting software), drop me a line and attach a resume (preferably in PDF format or plain text). My business is looking for people we can pay (it would be either a relocation or a work-from-home arrangement depending on what works best for everyone).

Re:Talent shortage?

[toddhunter]

Yes I expect to see a lot of web servers written in rails soon....

Re:Talent shortage?

[maraist]

I haven't even gotten to the kids part (but that's coming). I willfully chose to live an hour away from work because the city life was not how I wanted to die the rest of my life. At lest in the hour ride, I can listen to NPR and 'relax', and culture myself, but YMMV. The main problem that many people (probably outside of the tech industry) face is social commitments.. Some people join groups, some do community service, personally I'm learning a foreign language to communicate with extended family.

But the fact of the matter is, once you leave collage, SOMETHING will soak up your time. And commitments beget commitments.

I lament how much collage study-time I wasted by doing open-source project work - lament not being able to make those trade-offs anymore. I don't know if this is fact or fiction, but most if not all of the greatest scientists were said to have not done any remarkable work after marriage+kids.

Re:Talent shortage?

[Almahtar]

Also, some of us can contribute to open source projects as part of our work. Using a library in the software you're working on, and find yourself wishing it could do X, Y or Z for you? Implement it in their code rather than yours and ship the change back.

You'll be writing the code either way - may as well share it.

Re:Talent shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spend sometime with Wife and un-wind a bit (and "un-wind", if you catch my drift...) I knew this was sarcasm after I read about this "wife" who participates in this unwinding business ;-)

Re:Talent shortage?

[badman99]

And the lesbian womens rights I.T students scream FUD CRIME !!! FUD CRIME !!! FUD CRIME !!!

Re:Talent shortage?

[Daniel Phillips]

Getting paid by the parenthesis while coding LISP is good too Truly.

(print (eval (eval (eval (quote (quote (quote (quote payme))))))))

Re:Talent shortage?

[chawly]

And during ? Remember this is about talent. It can be done --- but you may want to give some thought to the best way to look after the soap.

Re:Talent shortage?

[jackflap]

See, I like this one. From what you've just said, it's already quite safe to assume that you don't have kids. As ANY parent will tell you, you don't base decisions on where you live by how much time you save by reducing your commute. You choose where you live on things like where the best opportunity for schools are. Also, the closer to school, the closer your kids are to their friends and the easier it is for them to get there. Not to mention, you don't want to be living in the corporate centre of a city with your family, which is most likely where an IT company would set-up. It's bloody expensive, and not usually a safe environment for your kids to grow up in. So, the original poster's argument is right on. Anyone a bit older will more often than not, have their non-work time open-source contributions go straight out the window, even if it is something they would really like to do.

Re:Talent shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a library in the software you're working on, and find yourself wishing it could do X, Y or Z for you? Implement it in their code rather than yours and ship the change back. But that work was paid for by your employer. Unless your employer is on-board and you have a ton of paperwork to prove that, it isn't yours to give away.

You'll be writing the code either way - may as well share it. And here's the problem: you share it with your competitors too. The main OSS project that I'm in a position to contribute has mailing lists full of our competitors reporting the bugs I've fixed in our internal build. If I contribute back we lose a competitive advantage. And so the higher-ups have nixed contribution back of any improvements - not just function, even memory leak fixes and the like.

Re:Talent shortage?

[ClosedSource]

"You don't believe that talented people gravitate towards environments which offer them creative freedom?"

I don't think that talented people are unique in their desire to have it their own way, no. Furthermore, a group of people who all get to do whatever they individually want to do, don't make a great team. That's true for both open and closed source development.

Re:Talent shortage?

[MenTaLguY]

I'd submit that creative freedom is more important to talented people, however. Speaking anecdotally, although all levels of talent are represented, I've encountered a much higher proportion of very talented programmers in Open Source than I have at work in the commercial/proprietary world. One of the reasons I'm as active in Open Source as I am is that I've found it's the best place to find talented programmers who I can learn from.

I also don't mean to exclude the necessity of cooperation, but frankly in my experience most people in Open Source do what they do because it's what they want to do (which is very often stuff they don't have the opportunity to do at work). Speaking as a (multiple) project maintainer, this can make things a bit like herding cats at times, but as long as everyone on the project has shared goals, and as long as people are capable of making the minimal compromises necessary for cooperation, it works out okay. That the association is voluntary helps a lot: the group tends to self-select for people who share common goals to begin with.

Of course, that best describes all-volunteer Open Source projects. Projects sponsored/funded by specific organizations tend to be more structured, although even then paid developers are still given more latitude than is usual in the normal commercial world.

Re:Talent shortage?

[nostriluu]

Top marks for your use of persuasive statistics, and the data to back you up is right there on the page!

Are we about to go off the rails?
Danger On The Rails: Railroad won't talk about hazardous chemical cargo
Off the Rails: Big Oil, Big Brother Win Big in the State of the Union
Train breaks world's speed record on rails
Clinton rails against Bush border plan
US destroying Tomcat fighter jets to keep parts from Iran

See, 5 mentions of Rails and only one of Java!

Definitely much more compelling than http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm

Re:Talent shortage?

[ClosedSource]

"I'd submit that creative freedom is more important to talented people, however. Speaking anecdotally, although all levels of talent are represented, I've encountered a much higher proportion of very talented programmers in Open Source than I have at work in the commercial/proprietary world."

I guess I've never seen a significant relationship between the desire for creative freedom and talent. I guess I've met too many people who crave creative freedom while those around them are rolling their eyes behind their back.

As far as your own observations about open vs. closed development, it depends on how much experience you have and what kind of people you've worked with. Certainly if you're comparing closed source IT folks with open source developers, it's not a fair comparison (I'm not saying you have).

Re:Talent shortage?

[bfields]

Where in there am I supposed to find time to sit in front of my machine spending hours debugging code for an OSS project?

During that block of time that ran from 9am to 5pm?

If open source is what you're interested in--enough so that given some free time you'd consider working on it just for fun--it'd be smart to look into that possibility seriously.

OK, I can understand why people wouldn't: even if in the long term it'll be 9-5, in the short term you'd almost certainly have to put in extra time for the job search, and part of that might be volunteering on some project(s) to learn about them and to demonstrate your interest. But it'd be a mistake to just assume that the opportunities aren't out there.

Re:Talent shortage?

[bfields]

It is truly unfortunate that programmers of my generation aren't as prone to participate because they bring a much broader and deeper experience if for no other reason than years of working in the industry.

And probably you aren't the only person thinking that. Surely there are managers out there looking to hire people to work on Linux/Apache/whatever-floats-your-boat who share that opinion. Sounds like a good way to market yourself.

Though don't think you'll be as unusual as all that--plenty of people are working on Linux for Red Hat, IBM, etc., after years working on proprietary systems.

Re:Talent shortage?

[darrinallen]

Does anyone know a good way to get involved with developments on the Linux Kernel?

Quantity != Quality

[dintech]

Tomcat is an excellent product and a gem of the open source community. Just because there are 'only' 25 core developers working on it doesn't make it inferior in any of the other offerings out there. I'm not sure throwing more developers at it would necessarily make it better. See, Mythical Man Month for details...

Re:Quantity != Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ.

I tried to install Tomcat the other day for a rehosting consulting job I was tasked with.

The initial part of the install went fine, though the documentation seems to be written by someone from another planet. Very strange verb tenses, grammar, poor train of thought throughout (very jumpy).

Anyway, after I got Tomcat up and running, I realized I needed a connector to hook it into Apache. The docs were kind of sketchy on this (yes, they brought it up, but not in an organized, linear manner. It's like the docs are a stream of consciousness effort).

So I go to install the jakarta connector (after spending a half hour trying to figure out which version is the correct version, non-obsolete, appropriate for load-balancing, etc.) and the next thing I know: hot grits are down the front of my pants.

Re:Quantity != Quality

[El Lobo]

Not only that. More MS programmers participating on OS projects will also automatically mean more talented programmers. There is absolutely no contradiction in that.

Re:Quantity != Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, a lot of people think that Tomcat sucks. Heck, there even was a slashdot story on it. Or you can search Google for more testimonials.

From what I remember of using it, it would eventually collapse on itself with enough context restarts as it was leaking perm space and fail with an OutOfMemoryError. Truly production-quality level software.

Re:Quantity != Quality

[LDoggg_]

As of apache 2.2(web server, not tomcat) mod_jk is obsolete and this has gotten a whole lot easier. Take a look at mod_proxy_ajp.

It's now just one simple proxy_ajp.conf file. Plenty of options for advanced configuration, but a simple configuration could be done in one line like "ProxyPass /examples/ ajp://localhost:8009/jsp-examples/"

Re:Quantity != Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, what makes Tomcat great is it just works! You install it in under 5 minutes, deployments take 30 seconds, and your app is up in a container that hasn't given me any trouble at all. Please don't have 200 people with competing visions turning Tomcat into bloatware.

Re:Quantity != Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding!

It must be just me, but when I read '25 core developers' and the growth has been astronomical, I see that means that they kick royal ass, and the project is running fine with no changes needed. When usage *drops*, that's when you know there's a problem.

Re:Quantity != Quality

[claytonjr]

While I agree with your comment. Let me offer a different perspective: Would Linux be as popular if Linus was still the only developer? Your Mythical Man Month answer is not always appropriate.

Re:Quantity != Quality

[remmelt]

The entire point of OS is that it doesn't matter that there are "only" 25 developers.

If Tomcat's growth is astronomical, there will be people/businesses that want more features (or the 25 would be enough after all.) The thing is, it's open! They can hire someone to do that work. This is not feasible for most companies perhaps, but it's exactly what large corporations would (should?) do. Need better documentation? Pay someone to write it for you. Note that I'm not saying: "You can write it yourself." I'm saying that since it's open and you want the feature badly enough, you CAN pay someone to add it. This is impossible with most closed source software, unless you have some SERIOUS clout.

Here we come to the real dividing line between free and libre.

Re:Quantity != Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what I was thinking!...for every MS developer that joins open source efforts, the quality goes down by about 300%. The more of "them" that enter the pool of open source contributors, the more tainted the pool becomes with people of low caliber. Though I admit MS's development tools have always been pretty good, they have actually done harm by creating a generation of "programmers" who really don't know jack about sh!t unless it can be dragged in from some "designer".

Re:Quantity != Quality

[toadlife]

I agree, what makes Tomcat great is it just works! You install it in under 5 minutes, deployments take 30 seconds, and your app is up in a container that hasn't given me any trouble at all. Try putting it under a heavy load.

Re:Quantity != Quality

[qinjuehang]

I agree to a certain extent, but not totally. A lot of famous, or maybe not-so-famous writers on this topic has written that Open-source software will triumph over propriety software. And the main reason to this is actually the organization of open source projects. They take a distributed approach, so to speak. There is no hierarchy, and therefore, most features that has been proposed or implemented by amateurs actually make it to a CVS build. There are 2 winning points to this. Firstly, the "features" can be critiqued by a larger audience, because many people are willing to test CVS builds, and without the limitations of "higher powers" to control what features make it and what not. And also, this lack of limitation is what draws certain people to programming for open source projects. Therefore, having a group of "core" contributors is not the standard organization of open source communities, and loses many of the advantages of being open source.

Re:Quantity != Quality

[root-a-begger]

I have seen the inside of large proprietary products from the leading IT companies. Many times there are lots of marketing and product management folks assigned but only 2 or 3 core programmers creating the meat of the product.
So 25 coders on Tomcat sounds pretty good to me.
If your talking about providing support services for open source, ok, we need more qualified people.

Re:Quantity != Quality

[gr8scot]

I beg to differ.

I tried to install Tomcat the other day for a rehosting consulting job I was tasked with.

The initial part of the install went fine, though the documentation seems to be written by someone from another planet. Very strange verb tenses, grammar, poor train of thought throughout (very jumpy).

Anyway, after I got Tomcat up and running, I realized I needed a connector to hook it into Apache. The docs were kind of sketchy on this (yes, they brought it up, but not in an organized, linear manner. It's like the docs are a stream of consciousness effort).

If you need to be led like a cocker spaniel through the installation of the core applications necessary for a Java web server, what expertise are you expecting to be paid for? Is $40-$100 for a printed manual too onerous?

Why?

[Gotung]

Why does an open source project magically need more programmers because it has become popular? What's wrong with the 25 guys that have obviously been doing a kick-ass job with Tomcat? Throwing more bodies at it will just lead to bloatware.

Re:Why?

[ByOhTek]

I think they were stating it's size and complexity as the rational, not the popularity.

Still, yes there are 25 core contributors to Tomcat, but what is the total contributor size in a per-mont/per-year breakdown for the server.

And what percentage of the updates are being done by the core developers? If the proporition of the development done by the core team is half of what it was the year before, at any given point, but about the same absolute amount of work - then the development on the project is still growing exponentially, even if the core team remains the same size.

Re:Why?

[cromar]

25 developers is a lot. Maybe it's just me, but 25 developers would seem to be enough for most large projects. The real question is "how many developers dos it take to screw in a light bulb?"

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Q. How many BASIC programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

A. 10 to GOTO the hardware store, 20 to screw in the bulb.

Re:Why?

[dekemoose]

This is true. I was actually fairly surprised to find out the number of developers that my company actually has (or had before we were acquired). A few good developers is all that any good project/product seems to need. Adding more seems to simply result in more problems, not more progress.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with the 25 guys that have obviously been doing a kick-ass job with Tomcat?

Mine is just one data point, so your experience may vary. Tomcat development is dominated by Sun employees, and there seems to be a condescending "not invented here" attitude from certain members when someone from "outside the club" reports problems. As a result, I find that I am just not all that motivated to roll up my sleeves to help out.

Re:Why?

[plague3106]

One; to call fascilities and have them come out and do it.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we're going to be working with Microsoft according to the article, the number of programmers required to change a light bulb is ZERO.

Steve Ballmer will declare Darkness(tm) to be the new standard, and throw a chair at anyone who complains.

Re:Why?

[Almahtar]

But if it has more users it NEEDS MORE MAN MONTHS!!!!
- some PHB

Good use of resources?

[MikeFM]

If you can accomplish great things with a few core programmers that is called being effecient. Adding more programmers to a project usually makes it worse rather than better. Open source allows many developers to make minor changes, as they have need to, but doesn't change the fact that only a few core programmers are needed for most projects.

I don't see the number of open source programmers shrinking at all. If anything, I expect to see many new projects taking shape and a few catching fire and shaking up the industry. It's better for many small projects to be seeded so that a few can grow into new major projects. There'd be no point in adding more and more developers to existing projects.

Growth of developers vs. growth of users

[Iphtashu Fitz]

Just because one of these groups increases in size doesn't necessarily mean the other one has to. I've worked for fairly small companies where the number of developers didn't change dramatically despite the rapid growth in end users. Sure, more developers may be hired if you start developing new products, dramatically increase the feature base of the existing product, etc. but for projects that are relatively stable and have slower growth cycles there really isn't a need for a growth in the number of developers even if everybody on the planet is using that software.

Re:Growth of developers vs. growth of users

[dargaud]

Look at slide 7 on this presentation (sorry, pdf), titled "Software is a long-term commitment". It shows very well, the development curve of software projects with interesting variations between projects.

As a side note, I almost wet my pants seeing that Fortran is finally dead and buried.

MS...

[PeterBrett]

What does Multiple Sclerosis have to do with open source software?

Re:MS...

[teknopurge]

Chairs.

Everyone knows that.

From TFA

[Silver Sloth]

"Microsoft is still trying to work out its strategy," he said. "Ultimately, I think we'll see them embrace open source much more." Now I'm worried.

Re:From TFA

[Yetihehe]

Don't worry. I think open source is bigger than MS and when MS will try to embrace it, it will expand and extinguish MS.

Re:From TFA

[cthulu_mt]

Ballmer didn't read the "Evil Overlord" rules very carefully. "Never try to absorb an energy field larger than your head."

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, how's that undeserved ego? You guys really can convince yourselves of anything, can't you?

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't embrace Microsoft! They've got a knife, open source! They'll stab you!

Microsoft will probably hire coders to join OSS competitor groups and submit buggy, bloated code! They're evil!

EVIL!

(no I'm not being sarcastic)

Re:From TFA

[Almahtar]

Miguel de Icaza

Number of maintainers falls as project ages

[xant]

High-quality products general stay flat or lose developers over time without losing any quality. I have no idea whether tomcat is a high-quality product or not, but the core of it probably requires very little maintenance now, leaving the "core" developer circle free to work on edge features. There are an unlimited number of those for any given project, but the urgency of those edges falls off rapidly as a project ages, so it's rarely the case that a project needs to grow in developers just because it's getting older. Such projects usually split into separate projects with their own functionality core.

Also, it's ridiculous to extrapolate this process and make a statement about all open source. Developers are rarely destroyed, converting their energy into entropy. Instead, they are simply attracted to new products that need developers.

Finally, the talented open source developers pool will only grow, as it always has. If Microsoft is hiring people to work on open source, then those people will be new talented open source developers.

Re:Number of maintainers falls as project ages

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree with the parent; the number of developers doesn't really correlate with the quality of the product (case in point: Microsoft has about 9000 programmers, and their software is routinely out-done by very small groups).

In any case, FOSS development seems to be speeding up, not slowing down. Whether they're doing it with more or less programmers doesn't really matter, but I find it really hard to believe that it's less.

Re:Number of maintainers falls as project ages

[cnettel]

A "product" like Tomcat is useful by being a platform. As such, new standards and other developments outside of the product makes a greater implact relative to, say, a game. Many Java-related projects (i.e. projects that not only are written in Java, but support other stuff in Java) went through significant changes for the 1.5 release, for example. Just keeping a project of this type and quality alive requires quite a bit of work.

Read the article

[imgumbydamnit]

In fact, it alludes the increasing pervasiveness of open source in businesses as causing developer shortages, and the increasing role of the big players in open source projects. These are signs of the success of the open source model, folks.

There are millions of Hobbiest waiting to code.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because the corprations can't find coders who will make them tons of money for peanuts, doesn't mean that the "Just for Fun Folks" can't pick up the slack in the coding world if you invite them and give them a real chance. Just ask Linus.

I don't see it

[Wylfing]

First: who the F cares about announcements from Microsoft regarding open source projects, unless they are actually contributing.

OK, that out of the way, I can't see how a shortage in one project is a shortage overall. OS is about coders scratching an itch. I have contributed to projects but only when it was something that impacted me personally, and I wanted to see it fixed in a hurry. If the number of users of a project grows astronomically, that's great, but it has no bearing on how many coders participate if nobody feels an "itch" they need to scratch. Maybe the software is good enough for end users, and they feel fine about it.

Those coders aren't "gone." They're just off scratching some other itch, is all.

Re:I don't see it

[einhverfr]

OS is about coders scratching an itch. Actually it is about coders of varying motivations sharing code. Some are trying to deal with personal annoyances. Others are dong work for customers. Still others are doing work for employers.

Figure out how to monetize it

[athloi]

Fact: Programmers need money to survive and are generally underpaid.
Fact: People can work only 40-60 hours a week without burning out and writing crap code.
Fact: Programmers have lives outside of the code.

For Open Source to survive, it's going to have to figure out how to compete in a market economy.
Part of that means making better code, since some OSS projects (OpenOffice) are total garbage full of bugs.
Part of it means a path by which the average OSS application can monetize itself and pay its developers.

Maybe SourceForge needs to distribute profit from its AdSense earnings, I dunno.

Re:Figure out how to monetize it

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, the 90's is calling and asking for their FUD back.

Re:Figure out how to monetize it

[cbreaker]

Greetings, Microsoft Shill!

Fact: Programmers are not janitors.
Fact: Programmers are almost always compensated very well. (Where the shit don't they?)
Fact: Who cares about "lives of programmers outside of the code" in this context

Programmers get paid. You're a retard if you think it's all developed for free.

I don't find OpenOffice to be total garbage and full of bugs any more then the alternatives.

You put your bullshit out there like it's fact because you must be paid by Microsoft, or you must have a vested interest in closed-source.

Re:Figure out how to monetize it

[wwmedia]

with an alexa rank of 152 and involved in running a site of comparable size that uses adsense i estimate sourceforge makes 2,000 -> 3,000 $ a day from adsense

Re:Figure out how to monetize it

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe I'm feeding the troll; however, if you were talking anything approaching sense you're 'facts' would have applied just as well 10 years ago and there would be no open source in the first place.

Re:Figure out how to monetize it

[JamesP]

Fact: Programmers need money to survive and are generally underpaid.
Fact: People can work only 40-60 hours a week without burning out and writing crap code.
Fact: Programmers have lives outside of the code.

For Open Source to survive, it's going to have to figure out how to compete in a market economy.
Part of that means making better code, since some OSS projects (OpenOffice) are total garbage full of bugs.
Part of it means a path by which the average OSS application can monetize itself and pay its developers.

Maybe SourceForge needs to distribute profit from its AdSense earnings, I dunno. Funny...

Most places I see the kind of problems these 'facts' show are closed-source shops.

Oh yeah, another 'fact' for you. Open Source projects kicks closed-source projects in the groin in software best practices, construction techniques, usage of tools, etc, etc

Re:Figure out how to monetize it

[Anonymous Coward]

False.

F/OSS is good for some things, but there is a point where groups of people checking in code with perhaps a maintainer can't keep up.

Some examples where there is absolutely no F/OSS solution for businesses that scale:

Active Directory. Yes, there is OpenLDAP, but it takes a lot of third party plugins on various machines to get compatible with it. For large amounts of users (10,000+) scattered around geographically, there is just no other product that can do this, and that tools (like self-service password retrieval, or hooking smart cards) are available for. Pretty much every OS out there can hook into Active Directory and use it for user access. Too many user objects in one domain that it bogs down? Create a subdomain, and do trusts.

Exchange or Notes. There are just no solutions available at all to handle a medium to large company's mail, messaging and calendaring infrastructure that can scale, replicate, and cluster as well as these two commercial apps. Both also have extensive device support (cellphones, Blackberries, PDAs). Not just an available IMAP server, but a thorough client, so IT can remotely validate security requirements mandated by contracts or corporate regulations.

Databases. Yes, MySQL is great for a backend for someone with a Web page about their harmonica collection, but MySQL does not scale well to large projects. There is a reason the big boys use MS SQL server, Oracle, or DB/2.

You get what you pay for. F/OSS works for most tasks, but for stuff that just cannot fail, or is certified for use in SOX or HIPAA environments where due diligence/CYA is the difference between a successful career and a stint in a Federal prison, you just have to go commercial.

Support is an issue. All commercial products come with some sort of support. F/OSS, you are on your own. Should a business critical function go down due to come Apache/Tomcat glitch, you are SOL, and if this is a publically traded company, you have to tell shareholders why you were using a setup with no commercial support, then find a way to fast-talk them from filing shareholder lawsuits because due diligence was not followed. ASP/IIS glitch? It may bring downtime, but you can tell shareholders (and the auditors) that it was someone else's fault.

Lastly, commercial products do cost up front... but its a heck of a lot easier to get quality people who can run Windows than it is to find professional UNIX admins. The HR costs for a UNIX shop are a lot more than a Windows shop, unless the place is run by a LUG, or its in a geographic area where UNIX expertise is not a rare find.

Re:Figure out how to monetize it

[JamesP]

Yes, I agree with most of these examples (and I would add others as weel, esp. graphics / 3D programs), but this:

but for stuff that just cannot fail, Guess what, I have been working in closed-source systems that, in theory, 'just cannot fail', for some time now, and let me tell you this:

I rather trust my dog than these people, because they haven't got the slightest clue of how to do it. Yes, they try, and it works, most of the time, but really don't count on it. And these are name-brand systems, costing a lot of money, that probably controls some of the infra-structure you're using right now. (yes, I'm being vague on purpose)

Of course I try to fix it, but I gave up a long time ago.

ASP/IIS glitch? It may bring downtime, but you can tell shareholders (and the auditors) that it was someone else's fault. I'd rather use stuff that works (either open or closed), not expensive crap that doesn't work but gives me someone to blame for my incompetence (of using the BS product in the first place).

Re:Figure out how to monetize it

[einhverfr]

Ok, this is mostly FUD, but there are some reasonable issues here.

Active Directory. Yes, there is OpenLDAP, but it takes a lot of third party plugins on various machines to get compatible with it. For large amounts of users (10,000+) scattered around geographically, there is just no other product that can do this, and that tools (like self-service password retrieval, or hooking smart cards) are available for. Pretty much every OS out there can hook into Active Directory and use it for user access. Too many user objects in one domain that it bogs down? Create a subdomain, and do trusts. OpenLDAP + Kerberos has some advantages and some disadvantages compared to ActiveDirectory (for example, service principle handling in AD is horrid). Personally I think LDAP, H.323, and all other Open Systems Interconnect-descended protocols tend to be the wrong choices for TCP/IP networks. However some people like things like this.

Exchange or Notes. There are just no solutions available at all to handle a medium to large company's mail, messaging and calendaring infrastructure that can scale, replicate, and cluster as well as these two commercial apps. Both also have extensive device support (cellphones, Blackberries, PDAs). Not just an available IMAP server, but a thorough client, so IT can remotely validate security requirements mandated by contracts or corporate regulations. We will get there. It is not a matter of not keeping up but because the solutions which do exist are not quite as mature as they need to be.

Databases. Yes, MySQL is great for a backend for someone with a Web page about their harmonica collection, but MySQL does not scale well to large projects. There is a reason the big boys use MS SQL server, Oracle, or DB/2. Discrediting MySQL is all to easy. It is like saying that Windows ME is not suited for the enterprise.... Please try PostgreSQL or Ingres II and get back to me.

Support is an issue. All commercial products come with some sort of support. F/OSS, you are on your own. Should a business critical function go down due to come Apache/Tomcat glitch, you are SOL, and if this is a publically traded company, you have to tell shareholders why you were using a setup with no commercial support, then find a way to fast-talk them from filing shareholder lawsuits because due diligence was not followed. ASP/IIS glitch? It may bring downtime, but you can tell shareholders (and the auditors) that it was someone else's fault. My business offers support for a lot of FOSS projects. You are not on your own with our support.

Re:Figure out how to monetize it

[Anonymous Coward]

"F/OSS is good for some things, but there is a point where groups of people checking in code with perhaps a maintainer can't keep up.
Some examples where there is absolutely no F/OSS solution for businesses that scale:"

(And then some examples where the anonymous coward can't find F/OSS alternatives follows)

Well, let's accept for a fact that there's no real F/OSS competitor to Active Directory, Oracle or Exchange. What you fail to point out is the relationship between "no AD-like OSS product" and "F/OSS failure". Is there any unknown to me point within the GPL text that effectively prevent an AD-like product to be distributed under a F/OSS license? Or else, can I say Oracle Corp is a failure since it has no AD-like product either?

"for stuff that just cannot fail, or is certified for use in SOX or HIPAA environments where due diligence/CYA is the difference between a successful career and a stint in a Federal prison, you just have to go commercial."

And here comes a very strong claim backed up... with no proofs. On the other hand, IBM has quite some SOX/HIPAA certified products and -big surprise! they use the Apache web server. If you need commercial support, well, you need commercial support. How does it map into "you need closed source software" is a complete mystere to me... and it seems it's a complete mystere to people like IBM, Oracle (look for Sleepycat's BDB used on some Oracle products), or Red Hat too.

"All commercial products come with some sort of support. F/OSS, you are on your own."

You are just soo right! it's not like MySQL AB will support their F/OSS products, or Red Hat, or IBM, or Fujitsu, or Sun, or Novell

"but its a heck of a lot easier to get quality people who can run Windows than it is to find professional UNIX admins."

Maybe you are right. Of course, you again miserably fail to show us what the relationship between "F/OSS" and "hard to find" is. Or is it that AIX or HP/Ux became F/OSS on my back recently?

Who posts this crap...

[tomq123]

Some "Tech Analyst" from some "Open Source Research Group" (451 Group???) says that Open Source is on a downward trend because Tomcat only has 25 core developers. How is this news. Tomcat has done extremely well over the years with only these 25 core developers. Sounds like a very successful Open Source project to me.

Also, I think the rise in the use of Tomcat can be attributed to the move away from huge App Servers (WebSphere, Oracle, WebLogic) and rise in smaller more nimble apps using Struts and Spring, two other very successful Open Source projects.

Open Source is alive and very well.

Huh?

[snoyberg]

'There are 25 or so core contributors to that project,' Zachary said. 'Over the past four or five years that number has stayed virtually [unchanged]... but the growth of Tomcat has been astronomical.'"

I don't get it. There's an open source project run by 25 or so people that's had "astronomical" growth, but since they aren't bringing in new people there's a lack of talent? If they're doing well with those 25, why does the team have to grow?

Re:Huh?

[Wylfing]

If they're doing well with those 25, why does the team have to grow?

Precisely. Raw numbers of coders don't mean anything. And now for the real reason for my reply...

In Soviet Slashdot, a beowulf cluster of Natalie Portman imagines you

Oh, please let that be true.

Re:Huh?

[Shadowlore]

Because that is how management thinks. I'll break It out for you.

Management types want more people to manage because it gives them a means to argue they deserve more money. Their management wants to see more money first. SO if your product is successful and growing, your management expects to be able to bring on more workers so they can be considered more important and worth more money. Think of it as HR bloat just like feature bloat in an application.

Since these "analysis" articles are done by people who are trained in, experienced in, or familiar with that model that is what they expect of everything. It's the notion that success brings growth. They are blissfully ignorant of the small world concepts, or how real work gets done, or how software is different from building a Model T, and only see the "business" side - especially since that is what pays their salary.

The number of Toyota Camry repair experts...

[iamacat]

Also remained unchanged despite a big growth in the number of cars on the road.

J2EE is J2EE and there is no reason people have to specifically learn Tomcat in order to create and deploy applications. Production websites generally do not run on Tomcat but rather on Oracle OC4J/IAS or one of other commercial application servers. Why would people become experts in something they would only use to debug some starter projects under netbeans?

I bet the number of Linux experts has significantly grown during the same time.

Talk to the Hand

[Anonymous Coward]

The open source industry in 2008 will be marked by more news out of Microsoft

A company can talk out of it's ass at any industry it wishes; doesn't mean it'll be considered news.

How is this a troll?

[Pengo]

I actually agree with the AC.

I've been running Caucho's resin as an alternative to Tomcat for many years and it's been an outstanding product with none of the headaches I've had with Tomcat. Resin is GPL'd with very good documentation and optional low-cost commercial support.

Just because it's from apache doesn't mean it's the best for the job at hand. I find more often than not, people use tomcat because they believe that there are few options available, let alone easier and more elegant open source solutions.

Re:How is this a troll?

[LDoggg_]

The AC's post wasn't a troll, the moderator was trigger happy or misunderstood his point.

He was right, tomcat used to be a complete pain in the ass to connect to apache web server. Thankfully things have gotten much easier.
Also, on Fedora 8 you can have this all automatically working with the new open source JDK.

more bs less reality in yOUR future?

[Anonymous Coward]

a society of good folks, dragged into decline/dissolution by a handful of greed/fear/ego based corepirate nazi felon billionerrors.

micro management has never worked. it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster.

we're intending for the nazis to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather'.

http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv&oi=property_suggestions&resnum=0&ct=property-revision&cd=1

the creators will prevail. as it has always been.

corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7

as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption.

fortunately there's an 'army' of angels, coming yOUR way

do not be afraid/dismayed, it is the way it was meant to be. the only way out is up.

the little ones/innocents must/will be protected.

after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit?

for each of the creators' innocents harmed, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available.

beware the illusionary smoke&mirrors.con

all is not lost/forgotten.

no need to fret (unless you're associated/joined at the hype with, unprecedented evile), it's all just a part of the creators' wwwildly popular, newclear powered, planet/population rescue initiative/mandate.

or, is it (literally) ground hog day, again? many of US are obviously not interested in how we appear (which is whoreabull) from the other side of the 'lens', or even from across the oceans.

vote with (what's left in) yOUR wallet. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi glowbull warmongering execrable.

we still haven't read (here) about the 2/3'rds of you kids who are investigating/pursuing a spiritual/conscience/concious re-awakening, in amongst the 'stuff that matters'? another big surprise?

some of US should consider ourselves very fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate.

it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc....

as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis.

concern about the course of events that will occur should the life0cidal execrable fail to be intervened upon is in order.

'do not be dismayed' (also from the manual). however, it's ok/recommended, to not attempt to live under/accept, fauxking nazi felon greed/fear/ego based pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking hypenosys.

consult with/trust in yOUR creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."

Re:more bs less reality in yOUR future?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are bothered to write these tracts and post them, you obviously want people to read them.
If you want people to read them, fix your grammar and punctuation.

Write to communicate your ideas, not to obfuscate them. At the moment you are communicating in a incoherent, disordered and childish way. Either your thoughts are also in total disarray, and no amount of editing will improve matters, or you have something to say and need to do a little work before others can understand it.

Re:more bs less reality in yOUR future?

[Anonymous Coward]

dude - I think that post is by some kind of natural language bot - dont wate your breath!

25 is about 15 too many.

[Organic Brain Damage]

The assumption that a bigger team is an indicator of health is insane. Large teams in software development spend most of their time NOT WRITING CODE and NOT DEBUGGING CODE. They spend their time in meetings trying to figure out how to get 25 people or 50 people to all work together. If you have a really big job, like making a modern spreadsheet product, your best bet is to figure out how to partition it into a series of jobs that can be handled more or less independently by separate 5 person teams.

Re:25 is about 15 too many.

[Anonymous Coward]

People seem to be forgetting, while I would like to believe good programmers live forever it simply isn't the case. no new talent means that as the guys currently do it retire/find other interests/get hit by a bus there is no competant people to replace them. If 25 works there is no problem with that, but to expect the same 25 to be around forever is idiotic and to expect anyone new to pick up where they left off if they aren't bringing in new talent is just as idiotic.

Re:25 is about 15 too many.

[chochos]

It doesn't say that they're the same 25 guys... it just says the number of core developers hasn't grown. Maybe a new guy came into the team and after a couple of months another guy got hit by a bus, so the number stays the same... another new guy comes in, and someone other guy has a kid and leaves the project, etc.

Okay, time for the car anology

[zappepcs]

How many automobile manufacturers were there at the beginning of the 20th century? How many do we have now? Since the number of manufacturers has changed little at all, or even shrunk, can we assume that even with astronomical growth in the use of automobiles, that there is something wrong with the automotive industry?

While that doesn't quite fit perfectly, I think it makes a point. If your 25 coders are putting out code good enough for astronomical use growth, then no more coders are needed. Every OSS project does NOT have to turn into a MS look alike to be successful. I think the author needs to re-evaluate their definition of success here. The hummer vehicles are successful as business goes, but there is not one in every driveway in North America yet. I have some very successful code, and there are 3 users total. It hums along nicely, 24/7 doing it's thing and all the end users are happy. It does not have astronomical growth, but it is SUCCESSFUL.

Why does F/OSS HAVE to compete with MS? That's not really rhetorical. For most of what I do, OO is absolutely great. I have no need to run and load MS Office. To me, OO is successful. I don't have to drive a Silver Ghost to have a great car. Tomcat and Apache are very successful at what they do because (IMO) MS sucked at that job and offered no real competition.

MP3 players are a successful market... not because of the superior sound quality, or because they were made by MS, but because they do their intended job very well. Some better than others, but all do the job. In the software world, it seems rare that there are more than two options for a given product precisely because of MS (not counting Mac products). If you only had a choice between an H1 hummer and a Mitsubishi Galant, or a BMW motorocycle... which would you drive?

The insistence that software must be like MS is at best absurd, and at worse, it's the worst thing that could happen to the F/OSS software industry.

Re:Okay, time for the car anology

[Anonymous Coward]

That depends, which BMW motorcycle you talking about? If it's the R1200R, I'd take it any day.

Re:Okay, time for the car anology

[statemachine]

If you only had a choice between an H1 hummer and a Mitsubishi Galant, or a BMW motorocycle... which would you drive?

I'd go to the lot across the street where people are driving away with free tanks.

What you need is *not* a *core* developper.

[DrYak]

That's the typical opensource situation where whom you need is NOT a core developer.

25 developers are a pretty good team to constantly write, re-write and improve the inner workings of tom-cat. In fact, there are a lot of commercial project that don't have that much developer 100% dedicated to the project. And as GP poster pointed out : "Mythical Man-month" explains us why this team doesn't need to grow much more because of the added inter-communication and training of newcomers overhead.

What a lot of newcomers into the OSS world fail to realise, is that there is a lot beside "writing code" that is important for an OSS project to be useful. There's, for example, a very strong need for artist to make the visuals (UI design, themes, other graphics) in order to avoid having the OSS project look like some 10 year old ass-ugly Athena interface with a cryptic UI based on a non obvious metaphor.
And, like in your case, projects also needs people with good writing skills, to write nice documentation, specification, HOW-TOs, and other guides, because frankly there are a lot of OSS projects out there that are technical marvel from a technological point of view but whose documentation consist mainly of a a big dump of code comments and function names and where, in fine, the old classic formula "Google + {error message} = posts in newsgroups" is the only way to get decent help.

People usually fail to realise it. For them Open-Source mostly remind them of complex C/C++-code and they think that GPL is only for programmer good at writing code. And thus a lot of people aren't motivated to contact a project and start helping because they think they don't have the necessary coding skills. Whereas in fact, even with no competences at all in programming, they could be critically important with their artistic, litteracy, or other skills. (Even things like helping organising appearances of the project at major Meetings and Expo can help because it bring attention to the project, and that requires skill that are neither coding nor artistic).

Got served a WebSphere ad with this story

[Graftweed]

Is /. using targeted ads now? I was reading this story using the RSS feed and the annoying embedded ad image proudly (and weirdly) announced:

"Using Tomcat but need to do more? Discover WebSphere Application Server."

Re:Got served a WebSphere ad with this story

[Almahtar]

Mine was for American Express. TALK ABOUT WEIRD.

Just goofing with you of course - I think your situation was just a fairly entertaining coincidence.

Tomcat?

[etnu]

People who use Tomcat tend to be enterprisey types (which perhaps goes without saying; using Java to solve web problems is like using a chainsaw to shave), so it's no surprise that few of them are willing / able to contribute to the project. The kind of domain knowledge required to create an http server and to do the wiring necessary to make things easily configurable is pretty far removed from the typical day to day work of these engineers. I think this is kind of true for most open source projects. The free spirited "hacker" types who want to work on open source projects (write code without being paid? crazy!) tend to be the types of people more interested in algorithms and data structures than they are with worrying about the best way to implement GOF stuff.

Two but one must be the elusive female prgrmmr n/t

[Anonymous Coward]

...nothing to see here

WORK HARDER! FASTER! FOR LESS MONEY!

[MilesNaismith]

For ANY programming jobs, the end objective these days is not good programming.

It's turning out servicable CRAP as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Programmers constantly under pressure to spend 80+ hours in front of a screen, and constant hints from management about outsourcing their jobs anyway, well where's the motivation to keep your intellect in programming?

This is why smart people are turning to other fields, and there will be a shortage of US programmers whether you are MicroSoft or anyone else.

Talent is not being Cultivated

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, talent is not being cultivated, it's being 'manufactured'.

Just look at the glut of 'programmers' and 'software engineers' out there.

Too many went in it just for the money, some java flunky that is nothing but a glorified typist, that can look up code examples on 'teh interwebs'.

Network World FTL!

[Jonboy X]

He also said he anticipates Microsoft becoming increasingly busy in open source, since it "has a vested interest in making sure open source works well on Windows." However, he noted it could be well into the next decade before we see something as dramatic as an actual Linux distribution from Microsoft.

NetworkWorld: Your source for alarmist headlines, buzzword-compliant articles and wild speculation for over 20 years

Re:Network World FTL!

[alphadogg]

Gosh, thanks for the new tagline. BobB, Network World

Boomer retirement will increase open-source devs

[gregor-e]

The much-predicted talent shortage arising from the retirement of the baby boomers may, paradoxically, swell the ranks of open-source coders. Open-source folks work for coin of the spirit (which is that same thing wage-slaves work for, ultimately, as they turn their coin of the realm into stuff they like). Anyway, retired folks get itchy for something to do, and no longer need to earn a living. A lot of them will still have viable coding skills, and I expect we'll see a groundswell in open-source development of geezers looking for a rewarding part-time hobbby that will help them keep sharp.

ahem, hey stupid

[shareme]

Ahem, hey stupid Exactly how much has the SErvlet spec changed in the past 4 years for APache Tomcat to worry about increasing numbers? Not very much when compared to the specs for other parts of j2ee that govern app servers like Glassfish, JBoss, and Geronimo..Just look at the massive code changes from jboss 4 to jboss 5 that has new OSGI kernel.. Once ag9in flawed conclusions and flawed research.. Ask an expert once in a while you might get the real scoop.. Fred Grott Mobile Expert http://www.jroller.com/shareme

Anyone want to give me a job then?

[xaxa]

In July I'll graduate with a 2.1 (or better!) masters degree in Computing from Imperial College London (which, in case you don't know, is ranked very highly for computer science). I'm currently looking for jobs based in Europe, preferably in a very large city, preferably London; free software would be excellent! :-D

Email me :-). (Or email my University! rsi at doc.ic.ac.uk is the careers person. Not enough interesting companies do this, but all the investment banks etc do -- I get at least one email a day from "rsi" about banks, and about one a week for something interesting)

Re:Anyone want to give me a job then?

[tehcyder]

So masters degrees are graded in the same way as first degrees? I never knew that.

Re:Anyone want to give me a job then?

[xaxa]

It's a 4-year undergraduate degree, I get "MEng Computing" at the end of it. If I'd only studied Computing here for three years I'd get "BEng Computing". I don't know how the one-year masters degrees are graded.
My final year is essentially a masters, all my courses are options for one-year masters students and I have to do a similar amount of work for a project etc.

Only one way.

[Benanov]

>This must be the first time I have heard somebody call the MS business model unsustainable. Sure, it isn't very nice, but unsustainable? How exactly did they end up in that dominant market position for close to the last 2 deceades, then?

Illegally.

(Remember? Convicted Monopolist.)

Re:Only one way.

[eggnoglatte]

Illegally Well, that is the part where I said "not very nice" (OK, I admit I am prone to understatement ;-)

Still doesn't mean it isn't sustainable, since they have sustained it for 2 decades, and it doesn't look like they are facing any particularly dire consequences from their illegal activity any time soon. Financially they are doing well enough, even if double-digit growth rates seem to be a thing of the past. Anyways, they are doing much better than, say, General Motors, and even General Motors isn't going to go away any time soon (so it is "sustainable").

Re:Only one way.

[Anonymous Coward]

double digit growth for MS is hardly a thing of the past. This year they had record revenue and profit growth across the board.

Linux

[claytonjr]

If Linus was still the only developer for the kernel, how much less popular would it be? Your Mythical Man Month answer is not always appropriate.

Yes, The Free Documentation Sucks

[Skjellifetti]

But that is why books like this exist. You'll need to buy two. I've never found a topic where a single book covers everything I needed to know about that topic. Buying three will usually put you past the point of diminishing returns.

some of it makes sense

[recharged95]

for one: Tomcat rocks! (shameless plug?)

ok, now back to the article. Companies are only embracing OSS and not the Free part. This has been around for a long time since the UNIX-mainstream days. The problem I see is that end users will not have the free-version of the software available anymore as the industry goes both feet into SAAS mode--that was a nice aspect of the business that were involved in F/OSS efforts today, but with the big 3 coming in will likely disappear.

What does "graduate with a 2.1" mean?

[KWTm]

In July I'll graduate with a 2.1 (or better!) masters degree in Computing from Imperial College London

Just curious: what is a "2.1"? Is that an assessment of academic achievement, similar to the 0-100 on a report card?

Re:What does "graduate with a 2.1" mean?

[xaxa]

British degree classifications:

The percentage boundaries are common, but can vary between universities.
* First-Class Honours (First or 1st) (70% and above)
* Upper Second-Class Honours (2:1, 2i) (60-70%)
* Lower Second-Class Honours (2:2, 2ii) (50-60%)
* Third-Class Honours (Third or 3rd) (40-50%)
* Ordinary degree (pass)
* Fail (no degree is awarded)

Many jobs will advertise for "2:1 or above", there's a big perceived difference between a 2:1 and a 2:2.
The university makes a lot of difference too, but I'm sure that's the same everywhere (e.g. Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, etc are "best" by certain measures.)

Some places do ask for numerical scores (e.g. Google).

Since my grade is currently 69.something% I should stop posting to Slashdot and do some work ;-).

Re:What does "graduate with a 2.1" mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee's the Brits have all the luck. Why back in the day, When I made Honor Roll in college in the Computer Field, the grading scale when something like this:

100% to 92% = A Excellent
  91% to 85% = B Above Average
  84% to 76% = C Average
  75% to 68% = D Below Average
  67% to 0% = F Failure

Has the world education system sunk so low that BELOW AVERAGE knowledge is considered "* First-Class Honors (First or 1st) (70% and above)". I could have loafed off and drank a few more beer's and still been tops. ARGggg and pass me the grog...

WTF !!!

Re:What does "graduate with a 2.1" mean?

[xaxa]

It depends how hard the questions set on the exam are. Hardly anyone (perhaps no one!) will be expecting above 90% on any of the exams I'll be taking in July, they're set so as to go beyond everyone's knowledge and present a challenge.

"25" isn't some magic number...

[HalAtWork]

Just because there are 25 programmers tied to the project doesn't mean that they are the only ones who make contributions to the project via bug reports, patches, providing documentation, and it doesn't even include those who work on the modules, does it? Maybe the core of Apache doesn't need to change so quickly because it's pretty stable feature-wise, and modules incorporate most new features? Did you see how long it took to go from Apache 1.x to 2.x? I'm not talking about how long it took to release, although that was long, but even adoption of Apache 2.x took a long time because 1.x was considered stable and secure, and hardly any development was still ongoing besides bugfixes. The additional development was a *deterrant* to adoption of the new version. There are quite a few factors to consider here and the article barely glosses over them, but aside from some rhetoric on Tomcat, the article doesn't really have any actual information to back up the point they're trying to make.

Tomcat sucks

[toadlife]

It's developers who slobber all over tomcat. If they actually had to look after the abomination that is tomcat every day, they might shoot themselves for subjecting their customers to such madness.

As soon as you put tomcat under any significant load, the wheels start to fall off and the tweaking sessions start. I spent a frikin month trying to figure out why the tomcat app was not releasing threads and subsequently dying after a week or so of operating. It turned out it was a tomcat bug. Since java outputs the most useless error logs in the history of computing (unless you're a java programmer!), trying to figure out what was happening was virtually impossible. The vendor in this case was equally clueless and didn';t ever realize that the version of tomcat they shipped was causing the problem.

I recently noticed that in one of the tomcat error logs on one of our servers was logging 50MB worth of errors every day. It was the same error over and over. I put in a support ticket to the vendor asking them what the error meant. They said it was "normal" and to ignore it. Translation: Since your application seems to be working, and we don't know offhand what it means, we're going to lie to you and say that it's normal. Great! So I get to sift through 20,000 lines of nothing to find actual errors, and as a bonus I get to archive 50MB of the same nothing every day.

Another tomcat app we have pukes all over itself any time the connection to the database server gets interrupted. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, it's annoying. Other client/server based apps don't do this. Why does tomcat? Maybe it's just the app in this case.

Tomcat sucks.

- A Sysadmin

Only 25 devs is a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem they are pointing out is that there are only 25 core devs, a project that popular should have attracted quite a few more but it hasn't, why?

A big project creates a barrier to entry but no barrier to leaving. If you want to contribute to a big project you have to start looking at and figuring out the code and style used, a sufficiently complex project and any minor change might have chain effects all over, its actually a fair bit of work and takes a while on minor contributions until you get to the point your a core dev and understand the project. Takes a bad day or just getting sick of it to leave. At least at a company like MS or IBM or Google they can spend money to have somebody sit in front of that code all day and tweak stuff, the coder may not be passionate about their code buts its a lot easier to keep keep people there in front of it.

I'm very talented

[Anonymous Coward]

36:24:36

Haha: ironically my CAPTCHA for this post was 'nymphs'

err

[Vexorian]

So, some guy is predicting the future of the whole open source by reading 25 devs in tomcat as a bad sign. This is failing to impress me, sorry.

Re:Boomer retirement will increase open-source dev

[Anonymous Coward]

The much-predicted talent shortage arising from the retirement of the baby boomers may, paradoxically, swell the ranks of open-source coders. Open-source folks work for coin of the spirit (which is that same thing wage-slaves work for, ultimately, as they turn their coin of the realm into stuff they like). Anyway, retired folks get itchy for something to do, and no longer need to earn a living. A lot of them will still have viable coding skills, and I expect we'll see a groundswell in open-source development of geezers looking for a rewarding part-time hobbby that will help them keep sharp.

You may have something here. Been thinking of retiring early too and forget the corporate rate race. Far too many are in I/T today that could not code "hello" if their life depended on it. I love writing C/C++, and have designed/written C code since 1984. Got serious with C++ since 1990. Don't have any problems with pointers either.

Keeping sharp, working at home without traffic and a raving lunatic of a boss sounds good. My current boss is good, but what they don't know is once he is gone, I retire. Or perhaps get back into consulting.

The real shortages in this business is in management that will pay for talent and create an environment where you can efficiently and effectively code. Normal chair throwing conflict management styles do not work in software development. Allowing business people who know nothing of technology make technical decisions is another common mistake. And far too many businesses treat technical people like door mats. I suspect you get hooked into one of these teams and get to a production level contributor your not a rug mat.

Monetizing it is no challenge

[einhverfr]

My business is doing well.

Fact: Customer-centered businesses succeed.
Fact: Customers need things and will pay.

All that is really required is to find the arrangement where both sides win.

[sarcasm] Wow. That is so hard.... [/sarcasm]

Try freelancing.

[Almahtar]

Companies spend about double your salary on you if you're an employee (after taxes, benefits, building rent, etc), so they're willing to give you more money as a freelancer. Consequently you can also charge for each and every hour you work - if they want 80 hours a week from you by God they'll pay you for 80 hours.

Top it off with the fact that you can work from home or whatever random cafe you want.

Programming doesn't have to be a sucky job.

Just a thought here

[Allnighterking]

But as a Sr. Admin Iget a little tired of the assumption by so many that "If you don't write the code you are talentless" Has any one cosidered the idea that there comes a time when adding code no longer improves the product much. Some of these products really are about as big as they can get without imploding, there may only be 25 contribs, but how many does something as mature as Tomcat need?
A lot of the new talent will be of a different kind. In the 70's Computer Engineering was 80% theory/math and 10% language and protocols. Now it's exactly the opposite. Are they less talented, no just differently enabled.
The talent shortage, or rather the knowledge shortage is in HR It's time to learn what is really needed and stop boiler plating your job adverts. You're losing a lot of talent because of inaccurate or often inane job adds (Wanted: entry level linux admin to manage 30 windows desktops.) .

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is absoultely no difference in the result of or development process between open source and closed source. The *ONLY* difference is the competence and number/time of people working a specific problem. If by its virtue open source enables more / competent people to work a problem than could a similiar closed source version you can bet it will do good. In my opinion this is not a guaranteed outcome for all or even the majority of specific endeavours.

Everyone uses version control, everyone assigns leads for salient aspects of a project who manage/control those working under them in their space. Everyone goes through a code review process. Its about good organization and good talent. It has nothing to do with free vs paid. Thats just all in your head.

People are crazy to think that people of consequence will do signifcant work for free. There are many areas where companies have financial incentive to contribute in terms of code and standards process. There are many others where that model does not exist because no such incentives exist.

Firefox and Linux are both successful open projects. Now look at how they are organized and where the code really comes from. Large companies with paid programmers. Firefox has a more ridgid structure than Linux which is a reflection only of the space.

Local system complexity and usage base are huge indicators of success in open source efforts. If low/many then open projects flourish. If high/few they typically suck.

There is a limited pool of people in the world with the knowledge/capabilities to work hard problems and none of them prefer to work for free.

that's a very 1980s US viewpoint

[Trepidity]

Actually living in cities as opposed to way out in suburbia is becoming more popular again than it was in the 80s, and it never really went out of style in most of the world (in Europe and Asia in particular).

Re:that's a very 1980s US viewpoint

[quanticle]

Actually living in cities as opposed to way out in suburbia is becoming more popular again than it was in the 80s

As far as I can tell, that's due to two factors. First, you have young college grads who want to be part of the social scene provided by the cities. Second, you have retiring Baby Boomers, who can afford to move into a small condo as they don't have kids, and like the greater availability of services in the city. There's still no trend showing that families with children are moving back into the cities. Finally, GP has a point about city schools. In pretty much every metropolitan area in the US, you'll see that the suburban school districts score at least 10% higher on standardized tests than urban districts. For a family that wants their kids to have the best possible education, it'd be pretty foolish to give that up.

No method applies in all cases

[athloi]

It's true: no method applies in all cases.

Where F/OSS does well is in finding a software need of most computer users, and making a product to match. Although not all of these are open source, I'd consider the following great successes: PuTTy, EditPad, Opera, WinDiff, ActivePerl, WireShark, AirSnort, shttpd, Nero, Apache.

Where it does not work is in areas where centralization, and its proportionate reduction in expense per square foot of research and development and customer feedback integration, is beneficial. The aforementioned large DBs and projects like Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange come to mind.

However, it's fair to say that several things define the success of any project (sorry about the Wiki-formatting):

* Leadership
* Personnel
* Funding
* Clear mission statement

A F/OSS project without those, or a closed-source commercial project without those, is bound for failure. Every single time. Without variation.

There are some notable open source failures: Firefox, OpenOffice, CDBurner XP, PHP. They're popular so no one knows they're failures yet, but from a pure geek view of engineering quality and ability to do things well, they suck. (If you don't know that OpenOffice sucks yet, it's because you haven't tackled a larger or more complex writing project in it. Try AbiWord!)

I find Opera an inspiring example. Firefox, open source, sucks. IE, closed source, also sucks. Opera rules. If you aren't using Opera, you are being very foolish.