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Linux Foundation Chief: Businesses 'Will Fail' If They Don't Use Open Source Code (techrepublic.com)
The luminaries speaking at the Google Cloud Next conference had some strong words about the importance of openness, innovation, and a rich developer community. An anonymous reader writes:
First Vint Cert said there's a "thread of openness" that runs throughout the internet, adding that "the internet, itself, has open characteristics" and thrives on "permissionless innovation." And Eric Brewer, vice president of infrastructure at Google, touched on the same themes, according to Tech Republic. "Linux, Brewer said, won some of the early internet wars because it was open, but also because it was the most innovative of its time. He also said that companies should work with open source for the value of the ecosystem and community, not just the value of the code." Then Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin told the audience that business models were already changing to include open source, and ultimately made the argument that organizations that "don't harvest the shared innovation" of open source "will fail."
After seeing how GNOME 3, systemd and PulseAudio have destroyed Linux's usability for me, and after seeing how Firefox has gone way down hill, I have to question the involvement of large organizations, profit-driven or not, when it comes to the development of open source software.
The best open source software I use on a daily basis is developed by a single individual, or perhaps a small team at most. This software is usable and pleasant to use, perhaps because the creators are often among its heaviest users.
The worst open source software I have had to use has been developed by corporations or large organizations. In some cases this software has been supremely disruptive, especially when it has been forced on unwilling victims, like in the case of systemd. It's really strange to talk about the "ecosystem and the community", when software like systemd has, in my opinion and experience, inflicted great pain upon both of those things.
Gnome3 and its ilk, are the result of developers (and especially designers) not listening to their userbase.
The Gnome 3 designers aren't entirely to blame for the mess. Experimentation is a good part of innovation, or we'd be stuck using the teletype terminal. The problem is the speed with which the experiment was mainlined or adopted by the major distributions as the one and only true path to desktop nirvana. If they had allowed, say, a five-year phase-in period where features are added gradually then maybe users will get used to the new supposedly touch-friendly interface. Also a "classic" interface should have been available from day one even if it wasn't the default.
A good example of how this could be done is the evolution of the Google home page. Without Googling for screenshots, who can actually tell the difference between the Google home page now and then?
Deja vu: In the 80s we had a 70ish actor as POTUS, a woman PM in the UK, and a bald leader of that other nuke superpower
that if you are a software company whose software doesn't fall under the "blessed trinity" then it would be SUICIDE to go FOSS as you won't be able to make enough to keep the lights on!
Ever wonder why no FOSS game has taken game of the year? Why after all these years the only "competition" to Photoshop that is FOSS is literally some kid's school project? Why all those niche applications like medical diagnosis and billing are never FOSS, or why programs like GnuCash are a bad joke compare to commercial products like Quicken and Quickbooks from a decade ago? The answer is actually quite simple which is FOSS works on the blessed trinity and if your software doesn't fit that model you have no chance to survive and your company will go under. We've seen it happen time and time again, in everything from Windows to Linux game converters to repos for commercial software to OSes themselves, if it doesn't fit the trinity model? It has zero chance.
This is why FOSS will never become the dominant license, why despite MSFT doing everything short of making a high res Goatse as the default wallpaper Windows 10 continues to grow while Linux is flatline, it all comes down to the trinity simply not working for the vast majority of software out there and without the software people want and need to do their jobs? You might as well be offering to trade their PC for a potato. For those that do not know what the blessed trinity is, its 1.- Selling services, 2.- Selling hardware, and 3.- e-begging. And if your software, which more than 95% of the software used daily by hundreds of millions qualify, doesn't work under this model? Then FOSS is suicide because you simply cannot make enough money to keep the lights on in FOSS if you don't fit the trinity model.
I really wish it wasn't so, Windows 10 is such a nightmare it actually makes the thought of the return of the Ballmernator look like the return of Steve Jobs to Apple, and Google and Apple are racing to see which one can become the most Stasi like when it comes to gathering data, but as long as FOSS is so politicized and rigid that an individual or company cannot sell more than a single copy of their software before someone else gives it away for free? Then FOSS will stay exactly where it is, a niche tool mainly used by multinationals as a way to avoid licensing fees on their servers and to not have to pay for the software which they use on their hardware...which is of course #2 on the trinity..
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.