10-Year Anniversary of Open Source
Bruce Perens writes "Saturday is the 10-Year Anniversary of Open Source, the initiative to promote Free Software to business. Obviously, it's been incredibly successful. I've submitted a State of Open Source message discussing the anniversary of Open Source, its successes, and the challenges it will face in the upcoming decade."
I have a LinuxCare Visa Card!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Not open source.
"better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07
Making the software world a more friendly place to work and play! Here's to many more years!
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
It's too bad English requires titles to have initial-capital letters in almost every word. It leads to confusion.
While this may be the 10th anniversary of Open Source, it is not the 10th anniversary of open s.
Open-source computer code has been around about as long as computers, and the equivalent to open source in other areas such as blueprints have been around since time immemorial.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The first open source project I participated in was from around 1985-1996. The prject itself pre-dated that even.
Try to get over yourselves people.
...and will continue to do so, and even accelerate into the future.
I've been using Open Source all the way since the start, heck...I've even contributed to it by writing Open Documents and Wikis to help guide the everyday user how to use the various applications.
I am proud of what we have achieved, I remember when people at work mocked us as "nerdy" or "hippie" for constantly advocating alternative solutions to software and hardware solutions, but after being known for solving issues that the commercial world just couldn't this is no longer the case.
Thanks to distributors like "Ubuntu" that puts community effort together in functional packages for the "everyday man" - Linux has become both friendly and usable for everyone, not to mention the efforts of the Wine team that has made it entirely possible to run your favorite apps. under Linux with ease and little "under-the-hood" work at all.
Fantastic efforts, and an even better future. Personally I think the future for OS have never looked this good.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
It's too bad English requires titles to have initial-capital letters in almost every word. It leads to confusion.
While this may be the 10th anniversary of Open Source, it is not the 10th anniversary of open source.
Open-source computer code has been around about as long as computers, and the equivalent to open source in other areas such as blueprints have been around since time immemorial.
--
That'll teach me not to use Preview.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Open Source is a trademark group, but the real success has been free (an in GPL) software. Economic forces alone have pushed growth in this area up way above 20% per year in many areas, but the Open Source movement was sort of drug along by the coat tales. I'm not saying it's hasn't accomplished a lot, but pure economic forces would have forced this growth anyhow even if the Open Source group never formed.
I could care less about "Open Source"; it has done dubious good for us. Now, Free Software's anniversary I would care about quite a bit!
The concept of open source has been aroud for much longer than 10 years, I remember open source software on Fish disks for thte amiga in the mid eighties...
The first open-source software was created around 13,700,000,000 years ago, and remains so stable that it runs to this day, and is expected to do so indefinitely. However, its creator, God, forgot to document it. Therefore we have to write universe-HOWTO.html ourselves.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
This is actually just a 10 year dupe. Nothing to see here please move along.
Haaaappy biiirthdaaay toooo youuuuu....
Thanks for the recognition to RMS, within the last 10 years there were certainly times it seemed like he was being pushed aside by Open Source.
Open Source & Free Software are going to be crucial in another way in the coming years, and that's for the development of talent. So few companies seem willing to grow talent internally and outsource entry level programming duties. It's soon going to be the case that the only opportunity to obtain development skills will be through participation in Open Source and Free Software projects. If software patents get in the way of this, it will be another step in the U.S. killing itself for corporate greed.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
Ignoring for a moment that Bruce is clearly Slashvertizing his blog. Again.
10 years, huh? I wonder what Bruce's friends from UC Berkeley would say. Sure seems like they had open source long before Bruce decided to get his name in the papers. Parens' and Raymond's instance on taking credit for free software is disgusting.
This has long been a sore point with me. The term "Open Source" has been in use for more than 10 years. The first software related occurence on Usenet occured in the early 90's. This co-opting of the true history of the term has been orchestrated by ESR with his self-biased jargon file. He likes to demurr by saying that the foundation of OSI represents a true beginning but this is just a buch of phony chest thumping to make himself seem relevant.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
"Open source" goes back to the 1960s. The Free Software Foundation was established in 1985. The first major Linux release was in 1992. These new guys from the late 1990s are just mouthing off.
I'm a heavy user of Outlook and still haven't found a usable OS replacement for it, and one thing I absolutely require is full sync capability with my PDA and cellphone. Thunderbird/Sunbird don't cut it and it looks like Chandler's not going anywhere. I've long ago come to the conclusion that OS is a dead end for non-sexy and thorny apps.
This seems like as good a time as any to announce the creation of oPEN sOURCE software. I will be trademarking the term and will be having my army of followers begin flaming anyone who doesn't spell or use the term exactly how I proscribe on forums all over the Net from now on.
Anyone who claims there ever there was such a thing as 'open source' or 'Open Source' in the past are nothing more than liars or trolls. Please mod down anyone in the future who makes such inane claims.
The oPEN sOURCE trademark combined with my personal nutty ideas about software creation and intellectual property is the oNE tRUE wAY.
I'm sorry but the "Open Source" movement is a bogus attempt to water down the original purpose of GNU and the Free Software movement.
I've been in the industry for about 25 years and RMS was a visionary. While we we focused on software and what it could do and how to do it, he also focused on the dangers that our own creativity would bring to us and how to protect us from it.
Make no mistake, RIAA, MPIAA, SCO, et. al. are *ALL* apparitions RMS saw over a decade or so ago. The Open Source movement is nothing more than a selfish group of little people with a narrow scope and no plan. RMS has had a plan all along, and while he may seem to be an extremist and might not have been right 100% of the time, in retrospect, he has been right pretty darn close and his extremism seems less and less unwarranted over time.
The truth is both a blessing and a curse. It takes a lot of work to realize the truth and most people will not challenge themselves. Once you learn the truth, however, you are cursed with trying to explain it to others.
that no matter how much you may not like it, how you dress, present yourself and speak is how other people will judge what you do.
So when talking about Linux, look neat, don't stink, and don't talk like a raving maniac.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think he actually means "Free"; if you read the article he's very careful to be clear that Open Source should be little more than a rebranding of Richard Stallman's ideas and ideals but wearing a sharp tailored suit. It's an excellent document. The only mistake is the implication that companies bigger than 1000 are not at risk from patents. As a person in an engineering company with more than 50k employees, I can really tell you that's not true. Patents are a form of war on those who produce by those who steal.
With an absence of scarcity. A lot of economic rules (not all, but a lot) simply don't apply to software in the age of the Internet.
Its wonderful to see all the meaningful discussion Slashdot can bring to one of its most cherished enterprises. Clearly people are RTFA because otherwise they might not be able to get over the fact that open source is not the same as Open Source. We all know that sharing code goes back to the computer labs of the 70s, but that the current movement known as Open Source is something different than that. Thank the gods we can all stick to discussion of the article at hand.
Wake me up in a year, when it's the 10th anniversary of Bruce Perens' mailing list post: It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again.
The term "open source" was coined to avoid talking about freedom, under the rather stupid assumption that business people don't want to hear about it. Here's the thing: business owners are some of the most vehement seekers of their own freedom, so if you talk to a business owner who is frustrated with vendor lock-in and tell him that he can have the freedom to do away with this crap once and for all, he'll listen. Perhaps some short-sighted middle managers will resist the idea, but if you convince the people at the top, those middle managers will be irrelevant.
I've heard plenty of stories I've heard about companies who "open sourced" their products, expecting to cut their development costs and improve their product quality by using the free labour of volunteers (like ESR observed in The Cathedral and the Bazaar), only to later give up because there are a finite number of volunteers, and their product just wasn't interesting enough. We shouldn't be promoting "open source" to software suppliers; What we should do is teach software consumers that they can demand freedom, and software developers will have no choice but to supply it.
We need to talk more about "free as in free markets". "Open source" just represents a preoccupation with technical details (source code) that business owners ultimately don't care about, and serves more as a buzzword and a source of unrealistic expectations than as a long-term promotional tool.
http://outcampaign.org/
It's interesting, these days, to hear someone say something like "Oh, Linux is no good - it doesn't even have a good multi-track music recording program. Linux will never replace [closed source platform]".
Remarks about Audacity and Ardour aside, it's come a hell of a long way in 10 years, when priorities were things like drivers, windowing systems and text editors.
Go Free Software!
The transition from Free Software to Open Source was like the transition from Punk to New Wave. Let's figure out how we can make some money off of this thing.
Some English style guides say titles of books, articles, and other items should capitalize every word except "a," "an," and "the."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
10 years? Right. The next real anniversary will be 2012-2013, the 20th anniversary of the founding of Slackware/Debian.
1. You state that both companies were forced to develop strategies to live with us. Is that really true or accurate? It may be, but it doesn't ring true. Apple was going down the tubes because of Apple. I thought they embraced Open Source in Darwin as a survival mechanism - in fact, I'm rather certain of it. I think there's a difference between embracing FOSS as a survival strategy and being saved as opposed to developing a strategy to live with FOSS. Also, as I recall, didn't we complain that MS had essentially ripped off FOSS for its TCP/IP stuff before finally coming clean without coming really clean? (I'm not sure of the detail, it was a lot of years ago, but it seems to have truthiness.) Are you referring to back-handed abuse of FOSS for profit as a strategy to live with FOSS? If so, I'd guess that is grammatically and therefore technically accurate - but is it accurate to the picture advertised - "develop strategies to live with us," or is accurate to the picture, "developed strategies to exploit us?"
2. You state that there are two companies to which you refer, but some of those companies are less comfortable than others. The words some and others imply plurality. When you divide two, you get two ones. Two units. You don't get two pluralities. This forces a cognitive dissonance that encourages hyper-criticality. Not good for promotion. It makes one wonder what you really mean to say, at the kindest.
If I missed your point(s) that I focused on in the example, then please understand from my feedback how others may be missing it, too, in their own ways.
Hope this helps.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Silver Jubilee!
Who's going to write the press releases?
Co-operation beats competition
...using Linux. I'm not certain when I started using Linux, only that I started with Red Hat 5.2. After a quick Wiki search I found that it came out in November of 1998. I can't believe it's been 10 years all ready. Jesus! So I decided because this November is the 10 year anniversary of the release of the first distro I started with I'll celebrate with cake. :-)
Open source software promotes Competition.
Closed source software promotes Collusion.
I don't remember seeing a post from you when everybody got into a discussion of who got an account here when and what user id number ranges co-incide with what dates, so, do you by chance remember (about) when you got your famous 3872 id number?
regards,
unitron
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I don't remember, but it was probably while I was Debian Project Leader. The archive doesn't go back that far. I do remember that I knew about Slashdot for months before I got a login. The 3872 number is only well-known because of the period when there were fake Bruces, more than one, on Slashdot. Tio Paco, uh, I mean Cmdr Taco was his usual unhelpful self. I had to make a point of telling folks that the "Real Bruce Perens" had that specific ID. This led to the Eminem parody.
Bruce Perens.
That Eminem thing must have been something I passed on due to only being on dial-up 'cause I don't remember it, but I do remember changing my sig to something like "the real unitron is user 5733, but doesn't rate an imposter" (and naturally soon thereafter someone registered something like un1tron :-)
I do remember registering sometime soon after getting here just as the Halloween Papers scandal broke.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.