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How Open Source Might Finally Become Mainstream

Posted by samzenpus on from the how-mom-will-compile dept.

geegel writes "The Wall Street Journal has a very interesting article on how autocracies are now embracing open source, while at the same promoting national based IT services. The author, Evgeny Morozov, paints a bleak future of the future World Wide Web."

3 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Thanks for the compliment by Amorymeltzer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At the end of 2010, the "open-source" software movement, whose activists tend to be fringe academics and ponytailed computer geeks...

    Here are some opening lines from previous Wall Street Journal articles:

    - At the end of 2010, the "global financial" traders, who tend to be morally crippled and calloused egomaniacs...
    - At the end of 2010, the "journalistic reporting" newspapers, whose employees tend to be hypocritical parasites and star-struck airheads...
    - At the end of 2010, the "United States", whose elected representatives tend to be greedy lawyers and ignorant blowhards...

    How fun!

    --
    I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
    1. Re:Thanks for the compliment by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I like how he mentioned computer geeks and academics, but not Google, Red Hat, IBM or hundreds of other examples of open source in mainstream life.

      Like most of the WSJ this article is full of FUD and written to agree with their readers pre-conceived notions.

  2. Re:Interesting by mellon · · Score: 5, Informative

    No offense, man, but it looks like you didn't actually read the article—you just skimmed it for something to disagree with. He doesn't say that at all. What he says is that it's likely that national governments, including the U.S. government, will resist purchasing and using software written by companies in other countries. And it's also likely that the U.S. government's attempts to get Silicon Valley companies to put back doors in all their software will feed into this trend.

    The bit about open source isn't even the point of the article—it's just the lead-in. He doesn't actually draw any conclusions about open source other than that it may play some role in the balkanization of software on a national level, because it provides a jumping-off point for national versions of software. Frankly, it's a damned good article; the slashdot summary doesn't do it justice.