Open Community vs. Open Code

snydeq writes "Recent silence regarding the future of OpenSolaris under Oracle's hand has InfoWorld blogger Savio Rodrigues questioning the relative importance of open code. 'Source code availability is a central factor in establishing trust in the open source community, as knowledge that the source is available can often allay fears about the future of a particular open source project or product. And yet, this trust can often be overstated,' Rodrigues writes. Members of the OpenSolaris community have been agitating for Oracle to clarify its plans for OpenSolaris in the wake of its acquisition of Sun, with some suggesting a fork as a way of severing ties. But, as Rodrigues points out, 'The community around an open source project or product can certainly be vibrant without having the resources to support a fork. In fact, this is true for many open source communities, which count numerous members, very few of whom would be qualified to develop the open source project further should a fork occur. Worse, even fewer would be interested in doing so.'"

Comments

Hmmm

[drolli]

So the short and neutral for of this article is:

A company opening the source to a given product at a given time may decide that - upon seeing not enough external developers jumping on - that it may be not worth continuing this effort. And the "community of administrators and users" complains they dont have enough programmers to fork it on their own.

How to say: Congratulations. But you know that *working* open source ecosystems also include programmers.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

But...But...But.. according the great and respected idol of all Open Source(tm) programmers, Eric Scott Raymond, there exists an infinite number of weekend hacker who will develop enterprise-scale operating systems in their spare time if only they follow the "bazaar model". So, therefore, Sun clearly did not set up enough CVS servers or something.

Re:Hmmm

[0123456]

Why would a 'weekend hacker' work on OpenSolaris when they could work on Linux instead?

That's the fundamental problem: OpenSolaris has user features that Linux doesn't -- assuming Oracle continue to support it I'm probably going to set up an OpenSolaris server in the next year or so because ZFS is better than anything Linux currently has -- but it doesn't really offer anything to the average 'weekend hacker' that Linux doesn't.

Even if it was made available under the GPL, I suspect most of the best code would be copied into Linux and then it would die off.

Re:Hmmm

[drolli]

its not about weekend hackers, but about companies developing new solutions based on the system.

Re:Hmmm

[MaggieL]

If you ever tried to use java.net anytime in the last couple years to host an open-source project, you'd know how close to true that is.

Re:Hmmm

[mrsteveman1]

By the time you get around to setting up that Solaris server, Btrfs will have stabilized through 3-4 more mainline kernel releases.

Re:Hmmm

[0123456]

By the time you get around to setting up that Solaris server, Btrfs will have stabilized through 3-4 more mainline kernel releases.

Which means that about five years later it will be ready for production use :).

I am thinking of switching one of my non-vital Linux systems to btrfs before long to try it out, but the whole point of setting up a ZFS server would be for proven reliable storage.

Re:Hmmm

[0123456]

Also, haven't Oracle been supporting btrfs development? That may not be doing that much longer if they now own ZFS.

Obviously development would continue without such support as it is GPL and is important for Linux in the future, but perhaps not at the same rate.

Re:Hmmm

[AlexiaDeath]

If I had modpoints, you would get a +1 Funny. But really, open solaris is dead and has been dead for some time.

Re:Hmmm

[gmhowell]

Have you looked at ESR? I think he meant to champion the "bizarre model".

Re:Hmmm

[pydev]

Spare time? Most open source programmers get paid for their work, and quite well. Companies pay programmers to contribute to open-source enterprise-scale operating systems because they don't want to be dependent on the likes of Microsoft, Sun, or Oracle. And it works out economically because those companies have been overcharging tremendously.

Re:Hmmm

[Runaway1956]

Yeah - I'm kinda watching that BTRFS. I like the idea of hotplugging more hard drives into a RAID array. Yeah, I know, technically, that's not what I'm doing, but that's the end effect. RAID 99+ anyone?

Re:Hmmm

[Runaway1956]

Yeah. Solaris. I've downloaded and installed it a few times now. Both on hardware and in VM's. I play around with it, then end up deleting it. I don't do serious server work, and everything I need to do can be done quickly and easily in Linux. I guess that Solaris/openSolaris is important to some people, but not to the average geek. Certainly not to the average person, LMAO

It would be something of a shame if Solaris dies off - but I won't miss it a great deal. Weekend hackers? I think most of them will feel as I do. If not, then a bunch of them can band together, and do OpenSolaris on their own. In a year or so, I'll download the resulting OS, and see how it runs.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

At which point Linux will dump it for the latest shiny. Just like hal. Just like pulse audio. For all its benefits, the Linux dev model is like a parasite that often forgets not to kill its host.

Re:Hmmm

[M. Baranczak]

My guess is that Linux is more important to Oracle than Solaris. They'll probably keep developing both.

Re:Hmmm

[Monoecus]

If you need ZFS you could also safely use FreeBSD...

Re:Hmmm

[morgan_greywolf]

More importantly, now that Oracle owns OpenSolaris, and therefore ZFS, there is absolutely nothing to stop them from contributing ZFS to the Linux kernel, which may, in fact, be in their best interests.

We only need to watch and wait to see what unfolds.

Re:Hmmm

[Kjella]

Spare time? Most open source programmers get paid for their work, and quite well.

[citation needed]. I know it's true for the Linux kernel and probably some other server software, but there's huge amounts of open source that I would be very surprised if someone was getting paid for. Some of the things Sun has been funding has been things where I'm not sure anyone would pick up on, at least not as a whole product. Sure, there might be the odd company that wants a little feature in OpenOffice here and an addition to the standard library in java there but who'll be the ones making OpenOffice 4.0 or the next major version of java?

Just to pick one example, look at the implementation of >8 bit color/channel support in GIMP. It's been a work in progress for many, many years and is still not done in 2.8. Obviously it's a lot of work and touches very many areas of code, including many people that don't care about it though everyone agree it'd be a good feature to have. If there was a cathedral, it'd be done long ago because the order simply came from high up to make all parts of the application support it and people would do it or be fired. Instead some people are trying to run around the bazaar trying to make people switch over even though it's as annoying as driving on the right when everyone else is driving on the left.

Though I'm sure it's an oversimplification, but if Steve Jobs decides then Apple jumps. If whoever in Sun decides, Sun jumps. But you can't make the bazaar jump, and that is something you lose even if you somehow find enough people to fill the void.

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Quality is more important than quantity, you need a lead dog or two, or six.

I wonder if Miguel de Icaza is looking for a big new project?

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

A strong Linux is not going to sell big dollar SPARC systems from which Oracle can make money.

Oracle now has a hardware side to the company too and this may take some time for it to reconcile with its various software projects.

Many companies use whatever hardware Oracle tells them to use - and the same for operating system too. Oracle will not make as much money recommending Linux on Dell/IBM/HP x86 boxes as they do with Solaris on SPARC. Linux man run on SPARC, but you don't run a mission critical database for a $100billion company there.

Oracle wants to provide the whole stack and they want to make the most money they can at every layer in the stack.

The margin and revenue from x86 hardware is small and if that is the only place that Linux runs, then the value to Oracle is small.

But that doesn't mean Solaris has a free ride. If Solaris can't compete with features and performance then ultimately Solaris will be dropped by Oracle.

Re:Hmmm

[Bruce Perens]

Yes. No matter how technically superior Solaris might be in a particular area - and I'm told there are a few - it's not superior enough to surmount the fact that Linux has hundreds of companies who host direct developers and a whole lot of un-hosted individuals. The #1 developer organization for any particular kernel release is often "no affiliation". If we just ignore Solars, Linux will catch up with those few areas. Especially since we can look at their code, as long as we don't directly copy it.

Solaris was a non-starter, unfortunately, on the day that Sun opened it. A lot of us said so then.

Re:Hmmm

[pydev]

[citation needed]

Are you really so unfamiliar with computers that you need a citation for that? Go through the list of Apple products, look at the equivalent open source packages, and you will find that the majority of them are sponsored or paid for by someone, or are done by people as part of their job.

I know it's true for the Linux kernel and probably some other server software, but there's huge amounts of open source that I would be very surprised if someone was getting paid for.

There's also huge amounts of closed source software that people write in their spare time: shareware, utilities, most of the iPhone apps. Obviously, we're not talking about the long tail of crappy little apps here that have no user community.

Though I'm sure it's an oversimplification, but if Steve Jobs decides then Apple jumps

And if Google or IBM wants a new compiler, a new browser, a new GUI, or a new OS, they create it and make it open source, hence Go, Chrome, Android, etc.

Just to pick one example, look at the implementation of >8 bit color/channel support in GIMP. It's been a work in progress for many, many years and is still not done in 2.8. Obviously it's a lot of work and touches very many areas of code, including many people that don't care about it though everyone agree it'd be a good feature to have.

It's been done, but the Gimp project didn't accept the patches. And on the long list of things that normal Gimp users want, this is fairly low priority.

Photoshop actually got this feature long after other packages as well.

And there are many idiotic restrictions and bugs in Apple's software that still haven't gotten fixed. For example, iWorks lacks ODF compatibility, Apple X11 has been in a death spiral, OS X still doesn't have any decent package management, and iPhone mail doesn't have a unified inbox. How many years has that been now?

If there was a cathedral, it'd be done long ago

Or maybe not if the company is abusing its control over the software to stifle competition, or if the guy running the cathedral is simply dumb when it comes to technology. Both of those apply to Apple.

but who'll be the ones making OpenOffice 4.0 or the next major version of java?

Oh, I'm sure people will be working on fixing and improving it as part of their job for decades to come. But I also don't think it's going to change too much anyway.

Now, who is making the next version of MacOS? Of AppleWorks? If I wanted to continue to use those, I'd be screwed.

Of course, OpenOffice, iWorks, Java, Objective-C, etc. are all obsolete anyway. Office suites are moving to the browser (and there are open source projects already there), and there are far better and more modern programming languages.

Re:Hmmm

[guruevi]

Yes, ZFS is very simple (the code is very clean and only a few thousand lines - a lot of them comment) but it desperately needs to be ported to other platforms. OpenSolaris is nice but the only reason I use it is ZFS. Imitation ZFS (Btrfs) might eventually become good enough for me to use it but the current feature set of ZFS is very attractive for just about anyone who needs to host multi-GB's of data. Other nice features of OpenSolaris includes their COMSTAR stack (make cheap hardware appear as very expensive iSCSI or FibreChannel targets), zones and dtrace.

Re:Hmmm

[Hurricane78]

Well, you can work on both. Just port ZFS and other useful stuff to Linux, and then forget about it. (Or the other way around, depending on which architecture parts you deem better designed.)

There, fixed that for you....

[LostCluster]

Recent talk regarding the lack of stability in MSFT's stock price under Steve Ballmer's hand has Slashdot commenter questioning the relative importance of closed-source code. 'Having availability of large assets is a central factor in establishing trust in the business community, as knowledge that the assets are available can often allay fears about the liability of a particular business product. And yet, this trust can often be overstated, the commenter pint out. Members of the business community have been agitating for Microsoft to clarify its plans for Windows in the wake of Sun's sellout to Oracle, with some suggesting a spinoff as a way of severing ties. But, as the commenters points out, 'The community around a closed-source project or product can certainly be vibrant without having the resources to support a large company. In fact, this is true for many closed source companies, which count numerous licensed users, very few of whom would be qualified to develop a competitive product should a spinoff occur. Worse, even fewer would be interested in doing so.

Think of the children of the parent company...

[LostCluster]

Let's not forget that Sun bought MySQL, which competes with Oracle's core database products.

Re:Think of the children of the parent company...

[fm6]

Does not. Completely different user base.

Re:Think of the children of the parent company...

[AlexiaDeath]

And AFAIK the originators of the whole project are already forking it... Oracle can try to kill MySQL off but due to community having both code and programmers, its not really possible.

Re:Think of the children of the parent company...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the business world considered MariaDB to be a valid, trustable fork of MySQL then why is the uptake so low? Hmmm? Why does Mr. Billion work so hard to pull MySQL away from SUN and into the OS world again? Has he spent all the money so soon? Missing the limelight?

Re:Think of the children of the parent company...

[jadavis]

In contrast to MySQL and OpenSolaris, PostgreSQL is one of the most open communities around. The core members are spread among several companies, it's BSD licensed with no requirement to assign copyright, and the community is made up of a wide variety of people. Not only that, they have established, effective, and written policies for release management, patch review/acceptance, etc.

GPL means never worrying about lifespan

[symbolset]

If you choose a GPL app for your critical infrastructure, you're pretty safe. If the vendor, sponsor, developers and everybody else involved drops it you can support it yourself until you can migrate to another platform or just become the primary fork. Choosing GPL means never having to say "oops", unless you're the kind of fool that wants to take a GPL app proprietary.

A commercial closed-source app? No, you're maintaining legacy hardware that supports it until you can't get parts on Ebay any more, and then you're sunk.

A non-GPL open source app? Your mileage may vary. Consult your attorney. Consult several attorneys. Be prepared to pay those attorneys to defend you in court.

Re:GPL means never worrying about lifespan

[im_thatoneguy]

Assuming development continues. If the open source app isn't staying competitive with alternatives then you're in just as bad of straits as being a closed source customer.

I've seen numerous open source projects just completely die. I've seen numerous closed source projects just completely die. Usually unless you're a top 5% company you can't afford to continue development yourself long enough to make any meaningful contribution. It's usually easier to adjust your infrastructure than it is to continue developing the product to keep it competitive.

Re:GPL means never worrying about lifespan

[symbolset]

Maybe you need a remedial education in Turing.

Despite what software vendors like Microsoft and Oracle would tell you, bits don't actually rot. Software doesn't age. It's a mathematical construct that works or doesn't. If it worked once then it always will and if it didn't who cares?

Open projects that have no utility are out of scope for my comment. If you use it and you need it, naturally you'll adopt it. And if nobody uses it or would adopt it maybe it's best stored in the archive against future needs. Certainly the GPL allows for indefinite storage.

Re:GPL means never worrying about lifespan

[hairyfeet]

The bits may not rot, but the speed and power available can be more than the program can handle. If a program was designed around a 1GHz X86 and a 100MHz IDE drive with 64-128Mb of RAM, and you are running octa-core x64 with SSD and 16Gb of RAM, can you fix it if it messes up? Would it even work correctly or at all without a total rewrite?

Open Source or not depending on how the program was designed it may or may not have the ability to run on the uber fast machines of today, or be able to deal with the next breakthrough of tomorrow. Just because a program is Open Source doesn't mean you magically can keep the thing running, it just means you can attempt it if you have the resources, which many do not. I kinda doubt any programs written in 93 and unmaintained but with source code would run any better now than programs written for Win3.x. Open Source merely gives you the ability to try, which most simply aren't gonna have the time nor the money to get others to maintain it.

Re:GPL means never worrying about lifespan

[greg1104]

All non-trivial software nowadays is built with an enormous reliance on some set of shared libraries. As time marches on, those libraries will diverge from the ones the software originally compiled against. Eventually, some API will drift enough that code stops working, and that's where the most difficult to avoid bit rot comes from.

Yes, you can keep code going without rot forever if you can completely freeze the build/deployment environment. But that's rarely practical. Eventually you will need a newer OS, which is going to ship with a new set of libraries, because the old one won't run on newer hardware for example. And that's where having the source and being able to rebuild the code yourself is potentially valuable, if you have the right skills to be able to fix this class of problem.

Re:GPL means never worrying about lifespan

[Anonymous Coward]

meh, use a VM if you have to use that fossil.
for the really ancient stuff, there are emulators.

I can imagine a future 100 years from now where some company refuses to rewrite software and ends up using winxp loaded up on a vm for ubuntu 20.04 and that ubuntu running in a hardware emulator for a superARM machine running megalinux 2040, that running in a simulated matter device on the quantum chip running quantumthinker, and that just got replaced with a pocket universe instance running on the alphaOmega OS

all because some dick in management and the 4 generations before him refused to do a rewrite or a port

Re:GPL means never worrying about lifespan

[im_thatoneguy]

Despite what software vendors like Microsoft and Oracle would tell you, bits don't actually rot. Software doesn't age. It's a mathematical construct that works or doesn't. If it worked once then it always will and if it didn't who cares?

Software doesn't age but our competition isn't standing still.

If we were still using 4 year old software we would be less efficient and create less work every day. Being slower. Being more expensive and less profitable would cause us to fall behind. Lots of software today is advancing at an incredible rate. What would have taken an hour a few years ago can now be done 15 minutes. If your software can't keep up then you're wasting money.

Development is expensive so we only spend our own time and money for outside developers when the competitive or efficiency benefits will pay themselves off. Maintaining most large modern apps and adding even minor features would never pay itself off. If your hourly rate is $200 an hour and a software upgrade costs $400 it only has to save you 2 hours a year to pay itself off. 2 hours of development rarely pays itself off.

Re:GPL means never worrying about lifespan

[hairyfeet]

Actually as someone who has to support "fossils" I have found that often emulators simply won't work. For example I have a graphic artist customer who loves a program called Macromedia Xres. He says the layout of Xres is far superior to PS, and that jobs that take scrolling through a dozen PS sub menus take two click in Xres.

Unfortunately the program was only released for Windows for a 2 year period in the late 90s before Adobe bought them out and killed it. I have tested it in several emulators to find it simply won't run on anything faster than an IDE drive or DDR RAM, something to do with its temp file structure. I doubt if it had been FOSS it would have helped at all, because most likely it would require an entire rewrite to replace its memory and temp file subsystems, far beyond my abilities or the customer's wallet. So instead I keep a "NOS" or New Old Stock AMD 900MHz running XP SP2 (the last version it would run on) machine running wired into a KVM so the customer can instantly switch between the two, with a constantly connected shared folder to allow drag and drop between the two workstations.

So I have a feeling as DDR 2 & 3 give way to DDR 5-7, and HDDs give way to lightning fast SSDs, you are gonna find that many programs written in the days of P3s and SDRAM simply won't be able to cope with the frankly incredible speed improvements we have gained in the past few years. So whether a program is FOSS or not really won't matter, as the programs will probably need an entire rewrite to cope, which as I pointed out is beyond most folks abilities or budgets. Easier to just keep a dinosaur on the network locked behind a firewall to do the jobs that won't run on new hardware.

Re:GPL means never worrying about lifespan

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you can keep code going without rot forever if you can completely freeze the build/deployment environment. But that's rarely practical.

Dude,

You should kinda be doing that for new projects anyways... For a given release, make a frozen copy (everything necessary to build and run it)(ooh, a vm image), and keep that around. It helps if you need to go back for support and if you really actually do want to freeze on something for a while (Consider that it can cost $millions to upgrade some systems, this sounds like a good idea)

Forked to death

[aws4y]

I am wondering, why OpenSolaris should even continue?, its not like there is no open UNIX available for x86, you have the BSD family, and even though its not a UNIX you have GNU/Linux. If you are running on Sparc hardware it may be worth it but methinks that oracle might have been interesting in Solaris as a way of getting away from linux.

Re:Forked to death

[andersenep]

ZFS.

Re:Forked to death

[CarpetShark]

ZFS is buggy and unreliable:

http://www.mouldy.org/zfs-the-final-straw
http://opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=473421&tstart=0
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/2008-January/016042.html
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=7682
http://markmail.org/message/4prch5ydto6nxquf

I'm interested in Tux3 and (particularly) Hammer though.

http://www.ntecs.de/blog/articles/2008/01/17/zfs-vs-hammerfs/

Re:Forked to death

[this great guy]

First link: author is vague and incorrect; OpenSolaris supports most common onboard SATA controllers. I have personally run it on nVidia MCP55 and above, Intel ICH7 and above, AMD SB600 and above, and OpenSolaris usually support all these very common chipsets/onboard SATA controllers.
Second link: the author is using unsupported dev builds of OpenSolaris.
Third link: the post is 2 years old and evidence suggests unreliable hardware.
Fourth link: the author complains about FreeBSD, not OpenSolaris.
Fifth link: the author concluded corruption was caused by unreliable hardware.

Search for "$NAME_OF_TECHNOLOGY unreliable" and google will always return thousands of results.

Personally I have a rather pleasant experience with ZFS. I have been using it for 3+ years at work and at home on 5-6 machines with about 50 drives total. It has been rock solid so far. And it has saved my life a couple times when drives died.

Re:Forked to death

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on what you do. If you just want have a desktop in front of your nose, then something like Ubuntu usually is a better choice than Solaris. If you want to write some code, and have confidence that exactly the same code will behave the same way 10 years from now, even if you meanwhile update the OS multiple times, and replace the hardware, then Solaris usually is a better choice.
Yes, I'm looking at you, Red Hat.

Re:Forked to death

[vcompiler]

A(n open source and portable) file system is hardly the reason you stick with a whole OS.

Re:Forked to death

[calzakk]

Is that it? Isn't there something else OpenSolaris offers that nothing else does? Anything?!

If that's truly the case, then it's already dead and ZFS will soon/eventually get into Linux, if indeed it's actually worth it.

Re:Forked to death

[NormalVisual]

Also note the parent poster's first link is a couple of years old, in addition to your comments.

ZFS *can* run into problems if it's run on cheap hard disks that try to boost their performance numbers by returning immediately from a cache flush request instead of actually writing the data to the platters first, but that's not a problem with ZFS itself. Most of the issues that I've seen regarding ZFS have been the end result of the storage subsystem not honoring flush semantics, or the result of a RAID controller going south and taking everything attached with it. The remainder have been due to flaky drivers or just the result of using code still in development.

On my own hardware (which experiences a pretty fair amount of I/O load), it's been totally solid, and makes LVM look like a toy IMO.

Re:Forked to death

[NormalVisual]

Right now, OpenSolaris is the only operating system that supports ZFS in the kernel *and* is capable of being a Xen dom0, in addition to offering its own native VM capability via Zones. FreeBSD supports ZFS and recently achieved the ability to run as a domU, but you're SOL if you actually want to host VMs on it under Xen, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Linux already supports ZFS via FUSE, but the performance sucks and can't really get much better since it's limited to running in userspace. The GPL and CDDL (which ZFS is licensed under) are fundamentally incompatible with each other, so don't hold your breath waiting for ZFS support in the Linux kernel.

Re:Forked to death

[Xtifr]

The GPL and CDDL (which ZFS is licensed under) are fundamentally incompatible with each other

That's true at the moment, but the company which just bought ZFS is known to be very active in Linux development, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that the license might change in the not-too-distant future, especially if Solaris looks to be reaching end-of-life.

Re:Forked to death

[Anonymous Coward]

You can drop GNU/ from the GNU/Linux because GNU has not got their own OS working or run. Hurd is just pathetic OS when compared to any other OS. Linux in the other hand is so great that GNU should already know they have lost the war to develop a own OS. What is wrong with GNU to try to get a server-client architecture OS. Just because Linux is a monolithic OS and it is not results of GNU project?

What's that I hear?

[SuperBanana]

In fact, this is true for many open source communities, which count numerous members, very few of whom would be qualified to develop the open source project further should a fork occur.

Did someone just say that very few people in open source project communities are qualified to do development work?

Kinda nice to hear that admission of reality, after a decade plus of open source developers using the "do it yourself" line to escape from listening to feedback and requests from end users.

Re:What's that I hear?

[AlexiaDeath]

It works sometimes too. I got into GIMP community via such suggestion. I sucked at code then, but I could debug things. That evolved into full developer thing over time since I got to know the code. Large projects like GIMP take commitment to know the code and to contribute. And that so-called line is not an excuse. If you want it done you need to do it yourself because, the developers don't have resources and the will to full-fill every users desire. Specially since they can be 100% conflicting at times with each other and sometimes with what developers see themselves developing, the product vision. Best way to know it fit matches the vision of those that manage the code is to ask and to to be offended when you are told "No", "Not now" or "Hell freeze over first" in some cases.

Re:What's that I hear?

[gdshaw]

after a decade plus of open source developers using the "do it yourself" line to escape from listening to feedback and requests from end users.

You mean to say that, when working for no reward, they work on the features that suit their interests rather than your interests? How shocking.

Your concept of user requests as something that developers have to ‘escape’ from betrays completely the wrong attitude. Listening to requests is one thing, but actually implementing them may require a large commitment of time and energy that you're not paying for. If you can convince someone to do the work anyway, for whatever reason, then that's great: everyone wins. If not then ‘do it yourself’ is a perfectly reasonable response.

Re:What's that I hear?

[im_thatoneguy]

If you want it done you need to do it yourself because, the developers don't have resources and the will to full-fill every users desire

Maybe not every users desires. But there has to be a system where people actually using the software full-time are listened to and included in the decision making even if they don't contribute a lick of code. All the features in the world are useless if it's unusable.

Look at the improvement in the Blender foundation thanks to Elephant's Dream and Project Peach. Real professionals using the product on real projects is how you get real feedback on your product. That's no different than how closed sourced products get their feedback, they invest a lot of time and money listening to the users and delivering what the users need while keeping an eye to the big picture. A bad community interaction is one of the leading indicators of misdirected development and stagnation.

Re:What's that I hear?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if the developers care. They owe no one their work.

And honestly, many of them want just to write the features THEY need. Not everyone else's, no matter how "important" it is to someone else's "usability" rating - although they often are open to doing small changes for other people out of pure kindness. Either way, that won't change. If you don't like things, get some programming done. too, or hire someone.

Re:What's that I hear?

[gmhowell]

Screw it, for $700, I'll deal with Adobe's lousy customer service rather than some OSS prima donna.

Re:What's that I hear?

[FooBarWidget]

And how's that an excuse against "do it yourself"? If you live in a household, not knowing how to wash dishes does not exclude you from the duty. Now you didn't sign a contract which states that you *must* wash dishes regularly. You can hire a dish washing person, or the other household members can be nice to you and wash dishes for you. But if neither are true then complaining whenever other household members ask you to wash dishes is a douchy thing to do.

"Escape from listening to feedback and requests"? The developer has to eat, how will immediately doing what you say get him his next meal? It won't, so he has the right to do whatever he wants with your feedback, including postponing to an indefinite time in the future.

Re:What's that I hear?

[QuantumG]

Your analogy is too confusing for me. Let's say you find some code and it doesn't do what you want.. so you ask the people who work on it to add some improvements so it works for you. They ignore your request. So you ask again. They continue to ignore you. You have a big screaming fit and complain that no-one is listening to you and that everyone is unhelpful and you hate them. I think "douche" is too nice a word.

Re:What's that I hear?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, OSS can be so poor that it took nearly a whole day for a bug fix when I reported one.

Citing Adobe as your example - why did my old Acer Scanwitt, capable of 12 bits per channel ship with Photoshop 5 Limited Edition which could handle 16 bits per channel in a limited but adequate fashion yet my newer flatbed, which was at least 12 bits per channel, ship with Elements that could only manage 8 bits per channel? Someone must have made a decision to remove the capability and that decision was not in my interests as a consumer.

So in short - in both worlds user and author interests do not necessarily align.

Re:What's that I hear?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Are the bulk Adobe's users suddenly buying their software now? I wonder how many of them demand technical support.

Re:What's that I hear?

[AlexiaDeath]

And what makes you think that a real professional wouldn't be listened to? Trouble is real artistic professionals seldom move in the circles of developers. We have had a few and Ive learned a lot from them, but they are rare... Strangely enough, its usually the non-pros that complain and demand things loudest.

Re:What's that I hear?

[ortholattice]

Screw it, for $700, I'll deal with Adobe's lousy customer service rather than some OSS prima donna.

For $700 you could probably get some attention from most prima donnas. Try that with Adobe, if you can even get connected to someone without a heavy accent and not reading scripted information you can find on the web anyway.

Re:What's that I hear?

[NormalVisual]

If not then ‘do it yourself’ is a perfectly reasonable response.

It is if you have the time, ability, and willingness to do it yourself. Otherwise it's much more efficient to go buy an existing closed source product that actually does what you want. I'm a coder with a couple of decades of experience across a variety of platforms, so I probably *could* hack on an open-source project to get it to do what I want, but rather than waste God-knows how many hours of my time and then be told to go away when I try to submit a change to the repo, I'm going to save myself a lot of grief, plop down a credit card and buy something made by a company that actually gives a damn about what I need.

"But you could pay someone to do the work for you!" $650 buys me a full copy of Photoshop. That same $650 will buy me 2-3 days of a coder's time, which isn't going to get me very far towards bringing GIMP up to the same functionality.

Re:What's that I hear?

[gdshaw]

I think you're reading rather too much into the 'do it yourself' response. Nobody is forcing you to use Open Source software, so of course you can go and buy Photoshop if it better meets your needs. However if you want specific functionality added to the GIMP then they have every right to decline to do that for you — to suggest otherwise would be absurd. They are simply telling you the harsh reality that if you want it to happen and they don't have the time and/or inclination, then you either have to make it happen some other way or live without.

Re:What's that I hear?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd really like hell to freeze over and the gimp to get a human usable UI.

Re:What's that I hear?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's in the household members' interest to not have me do the dishes because "I" could break the dishwasher/dishes, and then the dish washing system of the house would fail. They'd have to go to manual dish washing which would be slow and cumbersome. If you have a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing it's just going to increase burden on people who maintain the code while accomplishing nothing.

Re:What's that I hear?

[ClosedSource]

The point was not that open source developers should be obligated to implement everything the end users ask for, but rather that open source doesn't work the way people have been claiming for a decade.

Re:What's that I hear?

[ushering05401]

The point was not that open source developers should be obligated to implement everything the end users ask for, but rather that open source doesn't work the way people have been claiming for a decade.

Claims about the way that open source works? The point of the open licenses is to allow developers that work differently, have different needs and preferences or ego trips to create their own communities or go it alone.... and that is how it works.

My perception is that if a user goes through enough participation that they are recognized by the devs on the lists their feedback will usually be taken into consideration. By the time they have that recognition they have probably assisted the community in some way and they don't have to be bitching out in the cold, but can rather get their suggestions directed to the proper parties.

Fact is, even when a community has a guiding body instead of just a Maintainer that coordinates volunteers it is still better to research the history of similar requests put forth on the lists in the past, then find the devs that might actually be interested in your idea if it hasn't already been beaten to death within that community. In this scenario there is no complaining or listening to users, there is a conversation between community members that have proven themselves as such by steady participation over time.

The fact that one of the members in the conversation can't code doesn't come into play anymore because it is assumed that they will be willing to dogfood the changes, file accurate bug reports, and probably help out on lists/forums when questions come up about details of the implementation... basically there is confidence that the person doing the requesting will remain a part of the process.

Once a 'user' has done the groundwork it will be a pretty simple equation of how insightful their feedback turns out to be vs the amount of resources required to implement vs how able the developers are to add more work to their schedules. Fork at any time.

This is how it works.

Re:What's that I hear?

[gdshaw]

Who has been claiming what exactly for a decade?

If you mean users fixing problems for themselves, or developers implementing suggestions from end users, then these things can and do happen. Frequently. I've experienced it, and so have others in this discussion.

If you mean that this is guaranteed to happen, of course it isn't, but who would be foolish enough to make such a claim (or gullible enough to believe it)?

Re:What's that I hear?

[NormalVisual]

They are simply telling you the harsh reality that if you want it to happen and they don't have the time and/or inclination, then you either have to make it happen some other way or live without.

Absolutely, and I have zero problems with being told that. It's ludicrous to expect someone else to spend hours of their free time writing code just because I want a particular feature and am not willing to pay for that time. My point was just that the ability to roll your own changes is always trotted out as a big benefit of open source, but often it is of little practical value.

Re:What's that I hear?

[ClosedSource]

Well, of course it matters the degree to which these things are true. You'd also want to see what happens when you get away from the "poster boys" like Linux.

Re:What's that I hear?

[gdshaw]

Well, of course it matters the degree to which these things are true. You'd also want to see what happens when you get away from the "poster boys" like Linux.

Fair points, to which the answers are (a) it varies and (b) it varies. Being open source is no guarantee of quality, and if you pick at random then you will spend most of your time in the long tail of unfinished, unsupported code. The solution is simple: use the good and ignore the bad, just as you would with proprietary software. (Easier, in fact, because less is hidden and there is no monetary commitment.)

Re:What's that I hear?

[stefanPryor]

Well how many users of proprietary software have a chance to participate in the development of the software they use?

Not every user of open source software will have the opportunity/desire/ability to participate in the development of the software they use.

However, for those who do get that chance it is a pretty "big benefit".

In terms of "practical value", for some people it is very high, for others almost nothing.

In terms of the average benefit, its probably pretty hard to quantify... I suppose you could argue many ways. Personally I would think that the average benefit would be mostly a second order effect of the benefit to developers.

Re:What's that I hear?

[jesset77]

I'd really like hell to freeze over and the gimp to get a human usable UI.

Nah, I like it toasty here in Hell. Why can't GIMP get a good UI, 8+bpc support, CMYK etc without first altering the @#$ing weather? 8I

Netpbm changes with the times. (<3 Netpbm! ;D) So why not the GIMP?

Re:What's that I hear?

[jesset77]

In short, if you're going to hack the code, AND if you're going to lurk for upwards of a decade in order to be recognized by the community as sentient so that you can re-contribute your changes, then you will prefer today's Open Source ecosystem.

If you are on a tight budget and you are willing to bend your processes like taffy around infrastructure that hackers thought would be a good idea years ago and then forgot to cook it all the way through, or support as the code began to age, then you'll eke by on Open Source. If you lack respect for IP, you might also mix in some pirated copies of closed source software.

If you fear IP, and/or have the money to sink into software then you are generally going to buy either closed source, or enterprise licensed software. Because your money acts like a class equalizer, you don't have to bear the brunt of financing a feature that millions of people (who aren't hackers) already want. Instead, authors who want your money are actively trying to guess what you would like in order to sell to you and millions who share your (common, probably easy to divine) preferences.

More Open Source communities really need to grow a bit of sophistication and learn to reward hackers for meeting aggregate needs in order to end the cycle of circle-jerk that's asphyxiating the industry. There will never be a "Year of the Linux Desktop" until the needs of common Desktop users are actually satisfied by a Linux distribution.

I've seen "code bounties" (normally only offered by medium to large businesses) and I've seen bug/feature trackers with voting mechanisms (where the developers pan straightforward fixes years old with more votes than all other entries combined), but I haven't yet seen these concepts combined: where users could donate money into separate code bounty pots to clarify their aggregate interest in fixing specific non-critical bugs or implementing specific features. I think that sort of approach might make a big difference. Let the patcher and the community's governing body share the bounty by some split, to encourage actually accepting patches in favor of thumb-sitting. In case the feature becomes obsolesced by changes elsewhere, perhaps an Escrowed Assurance Contract would be the way to go?

Then you don't have to personally bribe some entrenched developer by paying him $100/hr to write every line of code, test, and sublet-bribe every other impacted task leader just to see (for example) GIMP get some feature everyone already wants and every other graphics package has had since the dawn of time. Non-RGB colorspaces, perhaps? Honest, I used these in Photoshop v2.5 in 1992, and Jasc Paintshop Pro v4 in 1995. Wouldn't it be great if Linux X11 (I've tried Redhat, Debian and Ubuntu over the past decade) allowed you to specify monitor sizes without hacking text files? Parallel service bootstrapping? You know, I've always wanted a tagged filesystem. I think I could rally support for one easier than I could just raise the needed funds by hand.

Re:What's that I hear?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet you trot out that ridiculous claim that if you buy a close-product it will #1 have the features you need, #2 if it doesn't that will up and incorporate your changes, #3 it will stay working....

Re:What's that I hear?

[NormalVisual]

It's not ridiculous that GIMP still remains a piece of shit compared to Photoshop, no matter how much you and every other OSS apologist try to argue otherwise. Adobe does in fact incorporate features requested by users, and by and large it's a lot more stable than GIMP.

Prove me wrong.

Free as in Future

[kainosnous]

There are many reasons why Open Source is good. The availability of developers is only one reason. Even if there seems to be a lack of competent developers ready to take over the project, simply having that potential can mean all the difference. If nothing else, the more eyes on the code, the more likely that bugs can be found and reported. At some point all closed source software will become unmaintained because technology changes, and there is only a finite set of resources. OSS, however, is always available to tinker with, even long after it seems to be worthwhile. As a comparison, think about older cars. They don't have all the bells and whistles, but still have value because they can still be worked on long after their respective companies moved on to newer models.

As a user of OSS, I prefer it even if there is a slightly better closed source alternative. Even though I very rarely look at that actual code, it's nice to know that it is there. It also says a lot about the company when they close up the code. I'm sure that others feel that way too. I don't mind if you sell your product, but I feel that once I buy it, it should be mine to take apart.

Sadly, Microsoft is a great example of how well closed source and good marketing can be. That is why I secretly want that giant to fall. I still think there is an unfortunately large number of people who don't care where their stuff comes from and what the real cost is as long as it works for the short term.

Re:Free as in Future

[GF678]

I still think there is an unfortunately large number of people who don't care where their stuff comes from and what the real cost is as long as it works for the short term.

There's a reason for that - the open-source community hasn't been able to successfully present a long term disadvantage to using closed-source tech that people can relate to.

I'm still using Windows because I honestly can't see a long term disadvantage in doing so. By using it I have all the software I could possibly want, guaranteed compatibility with current and future hardware, and so on. I've tried Linux and all I end up with is compromises to tangible things I want to do with my computer. If long term issues become foreseeable with Windows, then I can give it the flick and change to something else.

You HAVE to present to people a tangible long term issue with using closed-source software that they can UNDERSTAND. Geek ideology isn't enough, and if that's all that you've got, then no wonder closed-source tech is still going to dominate.

Re:Free as in Future

[devent]

I think you mean, how well locking in and marketing can be. I personally wouldn't care for MS at all, and would like to use some of their products, if they would use open standards. If I would know that I can safety use their products and can switch to a better alternative.

But because the case with MS is the exact opposite, I try to avoid anything MS related at all cost. OSS is really good and I prefer open source software but a open standards is a little bit more important to the consumer, I think.

Re:Free as in Future

[devent]

If you really using MS products you can't change to something else. If it weren't for open source software, you couldn't switch to OpenOffice.org, you couldn't access files on Windows with a Mac. There were no way that Firefox became a real competitor to IE if the code of Mozilla wasn't opened up.

My tangible long term issue which closed source software is that you never end the upgrade path. Need a new Windows? - You need a faster computer. Need a new Office CD? - You need to buy the latest Office version. Nero Burning was once a neat and easy to use burning application. Now it's over 300 Megabytes big.

You can't switch applications. You don't like the ribbon menu in Office2007? Touch luck, you don't have a choice. Windows7 can't use your printer or scanner from 5 years ago? Go get a new one. Nvidia don't write new driver for your 5 years old card for Windows7? You need to get a new one for 100$.

I think we can be thankful for OSS for a lot of things, but of course the normal people would never know because there are no ads on the TV for it.

Re:Free as in Future

[dkleinsc]

Here's a very significant tangible benefit open-source software gives you: free and easy-to-install upgrades. Of any established product. Also, open-source software doesn't come in 5 different versions (e.g. Home, Studio, Office, Professional, ...), it comes in 1 version, with all the features in it, what one guy smarter than me called "Awesome Edition".

An idea of how ridiculously easy upgrades are: I was working with Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon), and a notice popped up in the corner saying "Do you want to upgrade to the next version (Hardy Heron)?". I clicked Yes, waited for about 25 minutes, rebooted, and bang, I was upgraded. No CD juggling, no real intervention on my part, just 1 click and an internet connection.

And of course, being highly resistant to viruses is nice.

Re:Free as in Future

[linguae]

You HAVE to present to people a tangible long term issue with using closed-source software that they can UNDERSTAND. Geek ideology isn't enough, and if that's all that you've got, then no wonder closed-source tech is still going to dominate.

I agree completely, and I would like to point out one area that open source can make some inroads in: file formats. Many users of closed-source software use applications that store their data in proprietary file formats. While this may not be a serious problem for users using de-facto standard tools such as Microsoft Office where finding a copy (even an older version) is not difficult and where competitors have created tools that are mostly compatible with these file formats, this is a problem for users who are using less-popular proprietary software applications, where conversion tools may be hard to find or even non-existent. This may be a serious problem if the user decides to upgrade his or her computer and/or switch platforms, or if the user plans on storing those files for long period of time. From proprietary email archive formats, to the often-mentioned scenario of a small business using a database application written in 1994 by a software company that went out of business in 1997, and many other cases, it's a common problem.

While emulators are helpful in such cases, it would be nice if a user in a similar situation had an up-to-date, cross-platform tool that can handle the file. Had the user used an open-source product, there is a higher chance that somebody might have made a tool that handles that file format; the file format specification is available, the source code of the reference implementation is also available, and there were probably other users of the tool, including the developers of it. If a tool is not available, the user could even make a donation to help a technically inclined person write a conversion tool; the open source nature of the tool makes it possible. With a closed file format, however, the user is out of luck in this situation; even if he or she paid a technically inclined person to write a tool, the technical person would have to reverse engineer the file format, which may be very difficult and may be prohibitively expensive for the user (those files would need to be very important for a user to take this route).

This is one case where I believe users can benefit from using open-source software, although I do know that proprietary software products sometimes use open file formats; this is more of an issue of open file formats than open source software.

Re:Free as in Future

[bhtooefr]

Being highly resistant to viruses has nothing to do with it being open source, though.

It has everything to do with Linux being a minority OS. Security through obscurity, really.

OS X is less secure than modern versions of Windows (which is the first platform to get pwned in Pwn2Own, every time? OS X,) yet there's very little malware for it. Why? Because it's also a minority OS.

Re:Free as in Future

[Rockoon]

Also, open-source software doesn't come in 5 different versions (e.g. Home, Studio, Office, Professional, ...), it comes in 1 version, with all the features in it, what one guy smarter than me called "Awesome Edition".

hmmm..

Ubuntu, Slack, Fedora, Suse, Debian, Mandriva, Gentoo, ...

Re:Free as in Future

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish that were true about upgrading even most of the time. I have been using Linux off and on since the Yggdrasil Mitsumi CD/Floppy install days (mostly Ubuntu/Mint lately), and it had been more off than on until the last few years. One big downer is the unreliability of Ubuntu upgrades, and the usual rash of bad experiences reported on the fora when a number of folks try to upgrade instead of re-install. I have had enough bad experiences of my own that I don't even bother trying any more - I just keep /home on a separate partition, and point to that with the new installation.

But then there are issues with all those configuration "dot directories" having configuration conflicts that seem to accumulate over the versions. My wife's Gnome desktop has gotten really strange since Edubuntu 5.04 days up through Mint 7. I keep thinking I will create a new Id for her under the current version, and copy over her files, and make sure all her favorite desktop links carry over. And that is after each upgrade when I have to re-install all the little "enhancements" she depends on such as the Windows fonts she has in all the old class materials she has been using for the last 10 years or so in teaching first grade (gotta have that MS Comic Sans to show her kiddies the lowercase "a" the way she teaches them to write it, not the way most other fonts render it), old Lexmark Z515 driver I found some years ago, and not since, Wine for the educational programs (with suitable scripts/links) she has been using since Windows 95, etc.

And a recent "upgrade" on my main personal PC to Grub 2 (blindsided me there - gotta curb my ever-hopeful new release fever long enough to read ALL those pesky Release Notes) with Kubuntu 9.10 really hosed up my separate /boot partition when I decided to try that on a new partition. I had to re-install Mint 7 just to get my multi-boot setup back to a usable state (that took a lot less time than trying to figure out Grub2 and how to make it play nice with my long-standing /boot partition - I did not like Kubuntu 9.10's "blobby" look/feel anyway).

Although I use Linux for personal computing 98% of the time, this is such an issue since I still have to keep XP around to use some old, and occasionally new, Windows software since that version is more of a "constant" than Linux which has so MANY different distributions/versions (yeah, I am something of a distro hopper). They might as well be considered equivalent to all those Windows editions you sneer at, only there are so many more of them. Actually, it strikes me that Linux is at a significant disadvantage in that respect since there are so many issues with having the right library/gcc versions.

I do this for "fun", but certainly could not suggest it to non-geek types as something to depend on vs Windows with its support eco-system that most ordinary users can "connect" with much more easily (albeit for a significant cost in money terms vs my costs in time). Check out the Linux Hater's blog for a view from someone who seems to understand (with zero tolerance) the issues all too well: http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/

RO

Re:Free as in Future

[siride]

How is that any different from the problems you face in the OSS world? To take your points one by one...

If you really using MS products you can't change to something else.

Yeah you can. When was it ever true that you couldn't? This doesn't even make one lick of sense.

If it weren't for open source software, you couldn't switch to OpenOffice.org, you couldn't access files on Windows with a Mac.

It's true that Mac uses Samba and the OSS NTFS drivers, but if those weren't available and they wanted interoperability, they could have just as easily licensed the tech from Microsoft or done their own reverse-engineering. They have enough developers and money to do that. It's certainly cheaper to leech off of OSS, of course, and that's the general tactic Apple has followed. In any case, this isn't a victory for open source as an ideology, merely a convenience gained by some software that happens to be OSS.

There were no way that Firefox became a real competitor to IE if the code of Mozilla wasn't opened up.

I'm not sure what the logic behind this one is. Netscape *was* an actual competitor to IE for a while with a completely closed codebase. It lost for other reasons. Firefox could have been a closed-source browser developed by the Mozilla foundation and done just as well. The reason it was successful was not because it was open source, but because it was better than IE in terms of features, speed and security, among other things. There's nothing inherent to open source that made those things true.

My tangible long term issue which closed source software is that you never end the upgrade path. Need a new Windows? - You need a faster computer. Need a new Office CD? - You need to buy the latest Office version. Nero Burning was once a neat and easy to use burning application. Now it's over 300 Megabytes big.

The upgrade treadmill in the OSS world is even worse. Distros are released every 6 months or so. New versions come out all the time. "Release early, release often". Windows comes out once every few years. And as for needing a faster computer, well, bloat is increasing just as fast in the OSS world as in the closed source world, unless you limit yourself to simple and old fashioned apps. Then again, if you so chose, you could still run Win2k or earlier.

You can't switch applications. You don't like the ribbon menu in Office2007? Touch luck, you don't have a choice.

Huh? Are you really trying to imply that there is only one app for everything in the closed source world? No. Far more software out there is closed source than open. And there are alternatives. There are more browsers available for Windows than Linux, for example. Most of them crap, but the same is true of the OSS world. But in any case, there's nothing intrinsic to closed source that would make your argument valid in any way. And even if there were no such thing as open source, you could still write your own software if you really wanted to scratch your itch. There's nothing stopping you from doing that on pretty much any platform (except those that are terribly locked down, but you can avoid those if you choose).

Windows7 can't use your printer or scanner from 5 years ago? Go get a new one. Nvidia don't write new driver for your 5 years old card for Windows7? You need to get a new one for 100$.

Again, I fail to see how open source is any better, or even necessarily better, than Windows in this respect. First of all, at some point, if you are going to upgrade your computer or software enough that you don't have drivers, then you need to do the rest of the work. Nobody's going to support every possible combination of hardware going back 20 years. It's infeasible for both closed and open source software. And that is really just a matter of manpower, not s

Re:Free as in Future

[siride]

Lucky you. Often times distro upgrades are a disaster unless you are on a rolling release distro like Gentoo (which has its own host of problems). As for the versions, uhh, there are half a dozen commonly-used distros and they do actually have different editions, such as a separate server edition, not to mention frequent releases. OSS does not and never has had one edition (and I certainly wouldn't call it "Awesome" since so much of the desktop software is half-working, limited in features or buggy) and aside from X and the kernel and the GNU userland, there isn't even a single primary piece of software. You have different DEs, different web-browsers, different administration tools (per distro), etc. I like that flexibility, but it has to be mentioned because it obliterates your argument.

And Linux is not highly resistant to viruses. Its security model, without SELinux, is actually less protective than Windows's security model. The problem with Windows is that the shell is more permissive (which actually turned out to be a problem with KDE as well, with the .desktop files fiasco a little while back) and that the user and developer culture around Windows has been one of lax attention to security. These things are changing. And thanks to new protections put in by MS over the years and new attention to security brought about by the massive increase in malware during the 2000s is turning the tide. I rarely have to go fix my mom's or other people's computers because of viruses any more. And I've never gotten one (unless I intentionally did something very stupid) on Windows.

Re:Free as in Future

[dkleinsc]

No, it has a lot to do with being open source.

The standard example of this: Microsoft IIS is a minority compared to Linux running Apache, yet IIS generally has a worse track record on security.

Some of the reasons why it being open source help are:
  - Lots of eyeballs on code means that fewer mistakes last very long.
  - When a problem does arise, you have hundreds if not thousands of people capable of doing something about it, and as a result fixes tend to happen in less than 3 days. With a closed-source app, your server is at the mercy of the vendor, and typically it takes a few weeks because fixing bugs is lower priority than adding new features for the next version.
  - Lots of eyes on the code also means that developers are more careful about it, due to the social pressure to not screw it up.

Re:Free as in Future

[centuren]

And as for needing a faster computer, well, bloat is increasing just as fast in the OSS world as in the closed source world, unless you limit yourself to simple and old fashioned apps.

I was recently quite pleasantly surprised to discover that this genuinely isn't the case. I've been running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit on my desktop for a while without a dual boot, since I had only been using my desktop for gaming. A few weeks ago, I found a lot of inspiration to start working on various projects again, so I wiped one of my hard drives and installed Linux on it again. The Ubuntu beta actually, which reminded me why it's a good choice immediately after install, when in GNOME's system tray, I noticed an icon giving me the low battery sign and a warning that my MX1000 batteries were critically low (with nothing more than the default install).

Try as I might, I couldn't help obsess over the failure to smoothly draw (or at least blur) the rounded corners in the window decoration, and since I use KDE reliant programs anyway, the next thing I did was a system upgrade with KDE, effectively turning it into a Kubuntu machine (but will the full GNOME setup still there). I've have not been at all cautious about package dependencies or redundancies (meaning, I presently have more than one program installed that do the same thing for many different categories). I also have the most lavish effects enabled (those that are functional), and a ridiculous 24 virtual desktops. I'm pressed to think how I could have a more bloated set up, thinking back to my Slackware / Fluxbox roots.

The point, however, is that the K/Ubuntu bloated install performs amazingly fast, very noticeable against the Windows 7 Ultimate install. Both OSes have increasing bloat, but in terms of performance impact and hardware I've really been impressed with Linux, which, in my judgement, has blown away Windows in terms of how it's been handled.

Re:Free as in Future

[Blakey Rat]

If you compare Windows 7 to its predecessor Vista, it's actually the biggest reduction in bloat I think I've ever experienced in an upgrade. :)

Re:Free as in Future

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really using OSS products you can't change to something else. There's no MS Office for Linux, you're stuck with OpenOffice.org. You couldn't access a large amount of software from Linux. You can hope there's an OSS equivelent which might work sorta the same.

The tangible issues with OSS software is that you never end the upgrade path. New release of Ubuntu? Need a new computer. Need a new Office CD? There's none for Linux, use OpenOffice.org. Linux kernel was small and easy to build, now it's huge.

You can't switch in OSS either. Don't like a certain feature? Tough luck, fork it! Distro doesn't include a package you need? Too bad! Compile it yourself! Can't get a piece of hardware (like wireless) to work in Linux? You need to write a driver or buy a "compatible" hardware.

I think we can be thankful for OSS for a lot of things, but of course the normal people would never know because they never use it.

Natural selection

[gdshaw]

Worse, even fewer would be interested in doing so.

A telling statement. If enough programmers find the program useful, but in need of improvement, then it is very likely some of them will improve it. If enough non-programmers think that way then they can pay to have it improved. If this doesn't happen then maybe the program wasn't so very important after all.

This is merely natural selection at work, and for the most part the outcome will be as it should be — unlike closed-source products, which live entirely at the whim of their creator.

Re:Natural selection

[Mathinker]

> unlike closed-source products, which live entirely at the whim of their creator

I find it silly that you believe that there is no form of natural selection which drives the development/maintenance of closed-source products. In most cases, such selection forces exist and are largely economic in nature.

So, no, both open- and closed-source products are subject to natural selection, it's just that the selection forces on them are somewhat different.

Re:Natural selection

[gdshaw]

So, no, both open- and closed-source products are subject to natural selection, it's just that the selection forces on them are somewhat different.

In a sense that's true, yes, but the distinction I was trying to make is a finer one. Open source software is directly exposed to competitive pressures. Closed source vendors may be exposed to such pressures too, but closed source software is not — except indirectly through the vendor.

Now I don't want to argue about terminology, but there is a world of difference between an outcome that results from many thousands of individual decisions, and one that is the decision of a single individual or company. Projects like Linux and Apache won‘t die unless their communities abandon them — a natural death. There was nothing natural about how Microsoft decided to end the life of Windows XP (in spite of large and continuing demand) just because it happened to suit their business plan.

Re:Natural selection

[Americano]

This is merely natural selection at work, and for the most part the outcome will be as it should be — unlike closed-source products, which live entirely at the whim of their creator.

Yep, I heard Microsoft is thinking of killing off Windows and Office because Ballmer wokeup one morning with a sour stomach. Anybody using those products better get with the times and move to open source alternatives now, because it's only a matter of time before Microsoft decides to kill off its product for fun.

Re:Natural selection

[gdshaw]

Yep, I heard Microsoft is thinking of killing off Windows and Office because Ballmer wokeup one morning with a sour stomach.

Er, hardly the best of examples. As I mentioned above they did kill off Windows XP, and because of product activation and OEM licensing it won't be long before it is really quite difficult to obtain and use a copy legally, let alone fix any problems that arise. Granted the decision probably had more to do with profits than alimentary secretions, but from a customer point of view it hardly matters: their interests weren't going to count either way.

Now I'm not saying that Microsoft should be obliged to support old software indefinitely, or that running old versions of Linux is a pain-free experience, but that doesn't change the basic fact that if you want or need to do something badly enough with Open Source software than you can, whereas with Microsoft software you need permission from Microsoft.

Re:Natural selection

[Rockoon]

A telling statement. If enough programmers find the program useful, but in need of improvement, then it is very likely some of them will improve it. If enough non-programmers think that way then they can pay to have it improved. If this doesn't happen then maybe the program wasn't so very important after all.

One of these models is better for the consumer than the other:

Vendors each compete to satisfy demand.
Demand selects from competing vendor bids.

The former is the retail side of the closed source world as it is today, springing to life variations on the theme which then competes with the others.
The later is the contract driven side of the closed source world, springing to life a single solution which often contains the absolute minimum feature set required to satisfy the contract.

While both are used in practice today, one of them requires lawyers and other expensive shit just to get started.

Re:Natural selection

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up!

Re:Natural selection

[ducomputergeek]

We've been in a similar situation. It's gotten to the point where our customers want an integrated Point of Sale with our service. We spent 2007 integrating with other POS's for specific clients, but to integrate with just the top 10 point of sales in our market was going to cost us well over $100k in SDK's and licenses. We looked to Open source and found only one point of sale solution and it had the basics, but lacked a bunch of basics like employee time tracking and required a manger to know XML and something about Javan order to assign employee roles. After we made "suggestions" to the developers and seeing no action for two years we ended up forking it and started fixing these things ourselves.

Well we just landed our first big contracts to do customized development. One of the big reason we won the contracts is because we have an opensource contract. Our Service/support agreement was about the same as our closed sourced competitors. But with our solution there were no per terminal licensing fees and for what our competitors wanted to write an integration module to our client's ERP we could deliver a customized product. The biggest advantage our clients felt was getting the full source code. No matter what happens to our company, they are free to hire internal developers to continue modifications or hire someone else. We hope they don't, but that only means we have to provide the best service/support at a reasonable price.

Re:Natural selection

[Mathinker]

There was nothing natural about how Microsoft decided to end the life of Windows XP (in spite of large and continuing demand) just because it happened to suit their business plan (emphasis mine).

Last time I checked, business plans at Microsoft are designed to maximize profit for Microsoft. They might sometimes make mistakes (thus your impression that EOL for XP was "unnatural" --- your impression was that this wasn't a good business decision for MS, but no one can be certain because we cannot rerun history and compare), but that's still a form of economic pressure, even if, as you insightfully observe, it is indirect pressure.

Re:Natural selection

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft ending support for for Windows XP is no different than ending support for the Linux Kernel 2.2 or Apache 1.3. (Other than the cost of upgrading)

Re:Natural selection

[ralphdaugherty]

      I'm curious about the project you forked from. Were they interested in including your code, merging branches, etc.?

Re:Natural selection

[gdshaw]

Last time I checked, business plans at Microsoft are designed to maximize profit for Microsoft. They might sometimes make mistakes (thus your impression that EOL for XP was "unnatural" --- your impression was that this wasn't a good business decision for MS

No, you misunderstand. I don't doubt that what happened to XP was in Microsoft's selfish interest, given their ability to force-feed the market with its replacement. The point is that it didn't die due to lack of customer interest: it was killed by a few men sitting in a boardroom. You can't do that to Open Source software, because it is directly exposed to market forces.

Last time I checked, business plans at Microsoft are designed to maximize profit for Microsoft.

Yes, that's the problem :-)

Re:Natural selection

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft decided to end the life of Windows XP (in spite of large and continuing demand) just because it happened to suit their business plan.

There is always a large and continuing demand. I worked for a company that is still purchasing licences for Office 97. But there's no support for it and I don't expect it. How long can they be expected to support and patch a product? Windows XP was 10 years old, it's ancient. It didn't even ship with a firewall for f*ck sakes. Why the hell would anyone want to keep having to backport shit into a 10 year old codebase which wasn't designed for it? Not only that but they had to already tack on 10 years of diffent component upgrades, so the systems could be in a million different possible configurations.

While the new security model prevented amost every exploit and malware from working on newer Windows, people were clinging to their vulnerable XP installations and complaining about the security of Windows, which they had fixed!

RedHat 7 was released the same time as XP I don't see anyone crying about it's unnatural death. RedHat stopped building rpm's for it years ago, it must be evil and profit motivated!

Re:Natural selection

[evilviper]

A telling statement. If enough programmers find the program useful, but in need of improvement, then it is very likely some of them will improve it. If enough non-programmers think that way then they can pay to have it improved. If this doesn't happen then maybe the program wasn't so very important after all.

The problem is one of organization... A program can be extremely important to a large number of people, BUT if the user base isn't all looking for an open source option at the same time, there may SEEM like there's no community for it, and that will lead people towards a commercial alternative, even if, collectively, they would have improved the open source... whatever it is... to the point of being vastly superior to the closed-source option.

You have to factor in the cost of the needs of every single individual... If what one person needs costs X, but a proprietary option costs X/4, then they'll go for the proprietary option, just as will 20 other people, all of whom would be better served by collaborating. But sometimes, the timing just isn't right.

Then there's always the prisoner's dilemma. If I take the public code, and keep my changes private, then I have something valuable... Meanwhile, the community stagnates.

The great FOSS army is too busy playing Warcraft

[judeancodersfront]

they would have turned openSolaris into an M$ killer but they need to level up a few more characters first.

bullshit

[pydev]

We want source code under an open source license so that when a dickhead company like Oracle gets a hold of Solaris and Java, we can still continue to use it (which includes fixing bugs, enhancing it, and porting it to the platforms we like).

And even if I wanted to use closed source software, on my lists of companies to trust, Oracle would rank near the bottom.

Re:bullshit

[bhtooefr]

The point of this article is that it doesn't matter, because almost every single person fixing bugs, enhancing it, and porting it to other platforms is employed by Oracle, and wouldn't be able to work on a fork. Nobody else is really contributing, so a fork would die quickly.

Re:bullshit

[Xtifr]

The point of this article is that it doesn't matter, because almost every single person fixing bugs, enhancing it, and porting it to other platforms is employed by Oracle, and wouldn't be able to work on a fork. Nobody else is really contributing, so a fork would die quickly.

But what it overlooks is that most of the people who don't work at Oracle, but who could be fixing bugs, enhancing it, and porting it to other platforms, seem to prefer to work on Linux or BSD instead. The problem is not that the community can't support a free OS--the problem is that with several flavors of BSD and hundreds of Linux distros, the community may be starting to reach the limit on the number of free OSes it can support.

Of course, the article is purely speculative--up until now, Sun has been supporting OpenSolaris, so it's hard to say what would actually happen if it stopped. We might suddenly discover a bunch of lurkers who are willing to step up to the plate. It might go moribund for a year or two then suddenly get revived. Or it might die completely. At this point, any guesses are just that--guesses.

Re:bullshit

[pydev]

Well, if nobody else is really contributing, it tells you that people don't really care, in which case it doesn't matter.

I certainly don't care about Solaris. I still care a little about Java, but I believe IBM and other groups will continue to develop that under FOSS licenses.

Re:bullshit

[pydev]

It's not a question of numbers. If Solaris provides important functionality that other systems don't, then companies will invest in maintaining a FOSS fork. If ZFS, dtrace, and all that are all a bunch of hot air and nobody cares, then it will die.

The nice thing about FOSS is that, unlike corporate decision making, it's democratic and market-oriented.

Re:The great FOSS army is too busy playing Warcraf

[someone1234]

Linux leveled up meanwhile. OpenSolaris is noob, it needs to grind with an established party to gain some experience.

Re:And after all these years

[Anonymous Coward]

Even Linus Torvalds himself uses KDE, and encourages others to do the same.

Linus Torvalds is an idiot when it comes to user interfaces. Just look at git.

Seo services

[Anonymous Coward]

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Same situation as with Java

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenSolaris as an open source project fails at the same point as OpenJDK did - they are not really suited for participation. The environment needed to run successful open source communities is one of many discussions (real time and not) and a lot of experimentation, plus fairly relaxed rules for code changes/additions to actually make it into some sort of public trial in the main piece of software. Sun barely offered any of this in adequate fashion - most of the actual procedure to get changes in was modeled after huge corporation standards bodies. Madness like the JEP - a procedure in which you could spend years in meetings and writing absolutely huge stacks of documentation, only to find out after things had passed multiple reviews that there was no one really going to put a sample implementation of software into the JDK or JRE (JSR-106 for instance).

Re:And after all these years

[AlexiaDeath]

Choice of DE is a matter of taste. Personally I am KDE user too. A kernel developer does not have to do a good GUI. Git as version control is very nice once you get to know it. The UI parts are both optional and replaceable with custom tools if found inadequate. So far this has not happened.

Re:And after all these years

[JonJ]

Even Linus Torvalds himself uses KDE, and encourages others to do the same.

Torvalds has switched to GNOME.

Lauded by faint criticism

[turing_m]

Thanks for looking at each of those links. If this is the best FUD that can be brought to bear on ZFS, it's actually very encouraging. I searched myself for horror stories a few weeks ago, and did not find any that I thought were conclusive.

I've been using FreeBSD for several months now, specifically for ZFS. The more I play with it, the more I like it. Of course, if it wasn't for the few years of running Ubuntu, I wouldn't have built up the skillset or the patience to tinker with things until they work, which is what I've had to do (not so much ZFS, but the FreeBSD side of it).

As part of the design process, Jeff Bonwick questioned pretty much every convention that went with filesystem design, threw out everything that no long applied, and instituted everything he thought was a good idea. It shows. Dealing with ZFS is different, but in a much better way. The most beautiful thing is the checksums/hashes for every block, so that you KNOW when something has corrupted, and more importantly, you should have a backup, and hopefully, some redundancy so fixing it is as simple as swapping in another drive. Why should we, in 2010, when prices per gigabyte are dirt cheap, be still dealing with silent data corruption? There is no reason for it. Everywhere I look with ZFS shows that it has been sensibly architected.

Re:Lauded by faint criticism

[makomk]

It's not the worst horror stories out there. One sysadmin a few years ago discovered that, if you get the right corruption in a ZFS volume, the ZFS driver will cause a kernel panic when trying to mount it. The data's still there and can be recovered, it's just that you can't do it without manually delving into the filesystem and cleaning it up: the ZFS driver wasn't robust enough. This has probably been fixed by now, though.

Re:Lauded by faint criticism

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had the same problem with an NTFS volume before which Windows assigned a drive letter but couldn't recognize the partition. I could see the MFT data when I opened it with a disk editor. I was able to use TestDisk to repair it. All of the filesystem and data were completely intact.

Big difference

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, no, both open- and closed-source products are subject to natural selection, it's just that the selection forces on them are somewhat different."

That is YOUR point, and it is correct. I think the parent poster's idea is that once you have committed yourself to a software, the more "open source" and "free software" it is, the better. A company can just shut down their project, and you are then stuck with that version without the code. Worse, with DRM, you might lose all access and your data as well.. While if you have the sourcecode, you can maintain updates yourself or pay someone to do it. Heck, someone else may fork it, and you get all the updates for free, or someone to work with.

So the DECISIONMAKER of what and when to shut down, is entirely different in open source, than in closed source. The risks are much higher in closed source, since your sugardaddy will be a company that will base all its decisions based on revenue to their shareholders, and not their customers. The bigger they become, the more they will forget where their money is coming from. This is a big failing of the capitalistic system, but unfortunately, nobody seems powerful and wise enough to change it yet.

Re:Big difference

[Anonymous Coward]

Re your last point, it is not just the "capitalist system" (an economics term for combining financial resources to leverage them - even the Commies did/do that), so much as the bureaucratic de-personalization due to ever-increasing growth of institutions of any sort, whether they be business, government, non-profits, (even OSS projects?), etc.

Just saying...

RO

If there is demand for software, it will keep on

[unity100]

but if there isnt demand for it, there will be no use if you allocate numerous paid developers to it.

Re:If there is demand for software, it will keep o

[Rockoon]

There is plenty of demand for a high end photo manipulation and editing package.

While gimp is pretty good (it would certainly take a man year or two to catch up to it), its still like 10 years behind photoshop and even paintshop in most of the meaningful ways. The problem is that the demands being filled is not the same.

The developers of GIMP are fulfilling developer demand. There is no advantage to fulfilling professional or consumer demand, even though there is PLENTY of both.

Re:Oh, yeah

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You love an apple in the ass? That makes sense, it's much less painful than a penguin, not to mention a window.

Re:And after all these years

[AlexiaDeath]

So did I when distros pushed the immature kde 4 out. I went back the moment things started looking saner again.

lurkers and outside contributors

[Monkius]

That's wisely put.

As I look at the landscape, I'm actually inclined to think that opensolaris is usefully distinct enough from *BSDs, with interesting and rich tools and infrastructure to attract developers from (esp.) the *BSD kernel development communities, if it becomes clear that a clearer cut opportunity to do this exists.

Also, it looks to me as if the internal Solaris devs actually liked having an open process, and valued being open source, and that while a lot of the reasons for keeping the development and design communication internal were competitive, they were also just intended to avoid taxing the productivity of a very productive team. I'm surprised Sun's solaris devs wouldn't have tried to make more (perhaps piecewise) efforts to engage external developers in areas where those interests wouldn't conflict, and, perhaps they still might.

Re:And after all these years

[Anonymous Coward]

That's was just a package mistake on apt-get dist-upgrade...

Re:And after all these years

[Anonymous Coward]

Torvalds uses Fedora

Re:If there is demand for software, it will keep o

[unity100]

thats an important developer culture problem. developers are creating stuff that would appeal to developers, in developer mindset. if we want open source to really take off as a culture, we need to learn how to work for the needs of the common man, without despising it or harboring elitism.

Re:Oh, yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

You love an apple in the ass? That makes sense, it's much less painful than a penguin, not to mention a window.

Here is a very likely case scenario for a window

Oracle is continuing Sun's OS strategy

[straponego]

...which is to completely change direction every year or two. x86 on, x86 off, linux is crap, we're the biggest linux vendor, screw linux, solaris, opensolaris, change licenses, x86 off...

I do understand that Solaris technology is excellent, but anybody who counted on Sun maintaining consistent support for it hasn't been paying attention. So if Sun made you happy before, then Oracle should make you happy now; nothing has changed, the strategy spinner is still spinning.