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There is No Open Source Community
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jan 13, 2006 11:47 AM
from the you-can't-see-me-i'm-invisible dept.
from the you-can't-see-me-i'm-invisible dept.
porkrind writes "There is no Open Source Community is an Onlamp article about the economics of open source and how most people get it wrong. Really, open source is much more about supply and demand than it is about an activist community or individual drivers (individuals or individual companies) affecting change on society." From the article: "Taking the position that individuals have pushed open source forward leads to the conclusion that a core group of ideological 'believers' is necessary for the continued success of open source software. Businesses unaware of the falsehood of this claim are too afraid of running afoul of the 'open source community' and sometimes make decisions that are not in their financial interests. Both open source-based and proprietary software vendors need to challenge these assumptions."
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The Corporate Nightmare & Employee Torture (Score:5, Interesting)
Allow me to provide some anecdotal evidence of this fear. I work at Corporation X. I'm assigned to a project that requires me to program quite a bit of Java from scratch. So I download the latest version of Java and try to install it. No dice. I need a system administrator because only the JRE is on there, not the JDK. I e-mail my manager that it's going to be tough
So this FOSS department gives me a business process to follow which contains 31 steps that I have to push paperwork through. I say screw it and attempt to befriend a system administrator. About as far as I got was asking him to put the JDK, Apache Ant and Eclipse on my computer
What were they doing in that time? Highly paid lawyers were sitting around a desk grilling my manager about what this software would be used for. Then they debated whether or not someone could come after Corporation X in the future if they learned that their editor was used to create a project.
My frustrations abound in the corporate world but after what SCO pulled, maybe this insane precaution is necessary?
I can't help but smile at the wad of dough next to this articles on the homepage as whoever made that the icon for this category had no idea how much it applies here.
Where do I begin... (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, you don't need a system administrator to install any of those things. Apache, Java, Ant, Eclipse, Tomcat, can all run from your home directory, or anywhere else for that matter. Don't have access to port 80? Run it on some other port for development.
Second of all, Java is not open source in any way, shape, or form.
Third, WTF is your employer doing asking you to write a Java application, but forcing you to jump through hoops to get the software to do it?
Fourth, if this application you are writing is supposed to be deploye don Apache and Tomcat, then obviously the company has already given the go-ahead to use this open source software. So why the hassle?
It sounds like this is either a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, or a case of complete incompetance. Neither of which is good for a company.
Re:Where do I begin... (Score:4, Insightful)
The story sounded pretty much the norm for any corporate development job at a company whose primary business is not software. The IT idiots setup the environment for Joe Friday computer user, and then think that developers ought to be able to conform within this same environment.
First - My guess is he's running on Windows. The port 80 limitation isn't the problem. The problem is writing files to c:\windows without admin access.
Second - Aspects are, like JBoss and such. Whatever
Third - That's pretty much standard operation procedure for big corporations
Fourth - Apache and Tomcat are not Eclipse. The corporate lawyers wanted to be assured that Eclipse had not been made by child slaves in Madagascar.
It sounds like this is either a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, or a case of complete incompetance. Neither of which is good for a company.
Welcome to Corporate America. You obviously have never read Dilbert.
But don't get me wrong. The salaries more than make up for having to deal with incompetence.
Re:The Corporate Nightmare & Employee Torture (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Corporate Nightmare & Employee Torture (Score:5, Insightful)
In reality, the legal team should just go through the major F/OSS libraries then they would have no need to continually ask people about "what ifs". They could have a checklist of things that the software will be used for and you could probably tell in 15 minutes whether or not that licence is acceptable for that case.
In fact, that's one of the reasons I love F/OSS so much: with normal closed source software I have to read and re-read the licences to know exactly what I can and cannot do. With the free stuff, I just look at the name of the licence. I already know my rights and requirements for a fair few of these licences and I save time just knowing that I won't have to try and understand yet another licence in the closed source world.
Re:The Corporate Nightmare & Employee Torture (Score:5, Insightful)
That more and more open source programs make you agree to the GPL like it was some sort of EULA, baffles me. It isn't.
Re:The Corporate Nightmare & Employee Torture (Score:5, Insightful)
* we're writing a program and there's a free library here... what are our requirements in using that instead of writing our own?
* we're wanting to use a web app but want to change / add some features... what are our requirements with regards to our end users?
* we're writing an app that uses GPL code but only for internal use... do we have to provide source code to anyone?
There's just a few questions that even I've been asked from time to time. Having said all that, I think you almost made my point: you mention 'GPL' and knew that you didn't need a licence to use it. By just knowing the name of the licence, you understood your legal rights and requirements.
Now if I asked you: does the developer licence on Company X's component Y allow you to write a competing product, the only way you could be sure would be to read (or get Legal to read) the actual licence. If it was the LGPL, for example, you would know without even having to read the thing...
Re:The Corporate Nightmare & Employee Torture (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that by using hte software, you are agreeing to a license of some kind (GPL, Apache...whatever).
No you don't. The GPL doesn't restrict use in any way, and you're entirely free not to agree to any of its terms. If you don't agree, you're not allowed to do any things that copyright law restricts (e.g., distributing it) but then you weren't allowed to do before you started using the software either. Merely using GPL software doesn't mean you have to agree to anything.
On the other hand, if you use any software that has a EULA, an actual use license, then you are perhaps agreeing to something when you start using it. But I've never seen any open source software with a EULA.
Re:The Corporate Nightmare & Employee Torture (Score:5, Insightful)
Incorrect. For most proprietary software, yes, the license attempts to govern use and must be "agreed to" prior to using the software (whether this is legally valid of not I don't know but remain extremely skeptical). Most free and open source software does not include any license governing use (though it does include a disclaimer of warranty). The GPL merely stipulates conditions under which actions that would otherwise be copyright infringement may be performed. And I don't see how any court could decide that a text edited using a particular program is then a derivitave work of that program; please correct me if I am wrong.
I've noticed much free software ported to Windows requires, during installation, that one click "agree" to the GPL. This annoys me to no end because I need not agree to the GPL in order to use the software. Perhaps this common practice has confused you.
Here's why they've written this article (Score:5, Funny)
Do not talk about Open Source Community
Rule #2 of Open Source Community:
DO NOT TALK ABOUT OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY!!!
Re:Here's why they've written this article (Score:4, Insightful)
Next time, make sure you get it all the way out of your pants before letting go of the hammer.
Fallacious argument in article summary (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a Non Sequitur right there in the summary; just because an individual may have pushed open source forward in the past does not imply anything about future need.
Contrast this with saying "an individual pushed the invention of a wheel forward, leading to the conclusion that a core group of ideological 'believers' is necessary for the continued success of the wheel" and you see the flaw in the reasoning.
Must be taking pointers (Score:3, Funny)
a relevent anecdote from RMS (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's an anecdote from Richard Stallman [gnu.org].
At a trade show in late 1998, dedicated to the operating system often referred to as ``Linux'', the featured speaker was an executive from a prominent software company. He was probably invited on account of his company's decision to ``support'' that system. Unfortunately, their form of ``support'' consists of releasing non-free software that works with the system--in other words, using our community as a market but not contributing to it.
He said, ``There is no way we will make our product open source, but perhaps we will make it `internal' open source. If we allow our customer support staff to have access to the source code, they could fix bugs for the customers, and we could provide a better product and better service.'' (This is not an exact quote, as I did not write his words down, but it gets the gist.)
People in the audience afterward told me, ``He just doesn't get the point.'' But is that so? Which point did he not get?
He did not miss the point of the Open Source movement. That movement does not say users should have freedom, only that allowing more people to look at the source code and help improve it makes for faster and better development. The executive grasped that point completely; unwilling to carry out that approach in full, users included, he was considering implementing it partially, within the company.
The point that he missed is the point that ``open source'' was designed not to raise: the point that users deserve freedom.
Spreading the idea of freedom is a big job--it needs your help. That's why we stick to the term ``free software'' in the GNU Project, so we can help do that job. If you feel that freedom and community are important for their own sake--not just for the convenience they bring--please join us in using the term ``free software''.
power to enslave is not a freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
> Freedom also means that you don't have to make your software "open source" or "Free" if you don't want to.
You're calling the power to take away other people's freedom, a "freedom" in itself. Rubbish. When liberty in an inalienable right for everybody, yes, the "Freedom" to own slaves will be lost. No tear shed here.
Waitaminute... (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree one 100% (Score:5, Interesting)
"Taking the position that individuals have pushed open source forward leads to the conclusion that a core group of ideological 'believers' is necessary for the continued success of open source software."
Take the formation and continuation of the United States.
Certainly it was started by a small group of ideologically and personally "strong" individuals, a core group that got the ball rolling. But today, the country has reached a critical mass that although could be unravelled, seems to be for the most part on autopilot.
Why not both? (Score:5, Insightful)
This article tries to conclude "there is no open source community." They say: "Some software vendors believe that open source is an ideological movement." but say that this is an "entertaining narrative" and that the conventional wisdom (that ideological people drive open source) is wrong.
Why can the middle ground be true? Ideological believers in open source contribute significantly to open source. They evangelize and often they diretly contribute (with code, for instance!). Will an open source project die if the ideological believers abandon it? Will an open source project die if the community stops caring? The answer is (as always): it depends. Many projects are community-driven, so of course they require the community push. Others are driven more by companies, so as long as there are enough companies involved, the project will persist.
I have not finished reading the article, but already I'm annoyed. I find the black vs. white picture it paints a bit boring. The real world is complicated. It is worth making the point that companies should not fall into naive assumptions about open-source... but then again they would be silly to ignore the history of open-source, and the fact that alot of it really is driven and maintained by the community. Use that community to your advantage (but do not be led to believe that they are the final word in every respect).
So is there an Open-Source Community? Yes, of course.
Re:Why not both? (Score:4, Insightful)
Agree, but disagree. He says that OSS communities like to paint themselves as combatting the "evil commercial software" vendors. And I find that is correct. How many people, if you asked on /., would respond that they favor open source because it is a more ethical idea? I should think that this number is quite high. The article states that "religious communities" with people such as Linus Torvalds would never have gotten off the ground so rapidly if there hadn't been an internet. In other words, the classical model of development, to have experts gather and design software and then centrally distribute the software has worked and continues to work. Without an internet, this would be the only method of distribution viable. Walker's thesis is correct about the floppy disks; such a material-intensive approach is just ludocris and wasteful. Torvalds would be required to spend huge amounts to get the Linux kernel off the ground, and this is highly unlikely for a college student. In essence, we are OSS/FSF junkies because we see the advantages of it over commercial software, rather than as an avenue to "purify" software development.
What I will agree with you about is the fact that "open source communities" do exist. What I will also say, however, is that many of the projects on sourceforge are ghost-projects. Many of them are excellent ideas, but lack of interest and group dissolution tore them apart. The idealistic "good versus evil" is not strong enough to hold the projects together, so only a certain percentage of the projects ever acheieve even beta status. Walker says that without the internet, OSS communities would have never sprung up, as some OSS pundits would like you to believe. Many of us would preach about our ideals and our hatred of the software giants, especially the Redmond Giant, and act as if we were some outshoot of local game-enthusiast meetings. Not true. I would never have gotten involved in OSS had there not been an internet. I would have no reason to. It would have been totally preposterous, a waste of time, and a waste of money. With the internet I was able to learn programming and learn about OSS. I personally believe that OSS is a better approach to design than commercial software, and I think Walker is saying this. We can't keep treating OSS as just some holy crusade against the commercial industry.
The only point of contention that we do really follow religiously is the idea of intellectual property. Many OSS/FSF supporters indeed support intellectual property, but only as a method of naming authors. I support IP insofar as credit is given where credit is due. Money and excessive restrictions (such as DRM) are completely invalid (in my view). This is the only valid "cause" that I think OSS really has. Otherwise we would get along quite well with M$ and the other big guys. Walker in his article points out that IBM and other big names have latched on to OSS as a means for symbiosis. This is the strength of his argument. It is really a good article.
supply and demand (Score:3, Insightful)
Very true. If there was not a need, OSS would never have gotten started. If vendors had provided good quality, resonable cost software, OSS would not exist.
Like Margaret Thatcher's quote really (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Like Margaret Thatcher's quote really (Score:4, Insightful)
am I missing something? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen some open source programs out there then the commercial alternatives as well, after talking to developers, and people who work with and use this stuff, and even go that extra step of helping new users I think says there is a community, Linux User groups are a form of community people sharing idea's and supporting each other in linux. Am I wrong?
Bad history (Score:5, Insightful)
What are the implications for software developers? The obvious manifestation of a lower bar to entry coupled with an increasing number of programmers is that it is getting awfully hard for a developer to charge for software. (Quick, tell me the last time you paid for a bare-bones email client.)
A great example. In 1995 when was the last time people paid for software that had been expensive in 1980? The 1980 office products would be free throw ins by 1995. Small utilities are first sold separately and then get bundled into other larger programs. There proves nothing about scale.
It used to be that a developer could hack up some small utility, pass it around as shareware, and ask nicely for people to send money. While shareware still exists, the trends are not in its favor. More recently, people who hack together a simple utility simply give it away. They don't ask for payment, because they recognize that it's generally a fruitless endeavor. It's not that they give away the software because they think it's a nice thing to do; they give it away because it's the only way anyone will actually notice.
There was never a period of time when shareware was a particularly good model for anything other than marketing. The original shareware authors generally had a plan of:
1) Write shareware
2) Build up a user base (who pretty much don't pay)
3) Use this base to get a commercial vendor interested enough to finance bring the product out commercially
I could go on but this strikes me as a college freshman economics term paper on applying economic ideas to a recent trend, not as a real insight.
Software Development Doesn't Scale Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Some random thoughts about complexity. I don't have a coherent argument though:
The author seems to assume that the more programmers there are, the more a software project will advance. In my experience, though, a small, dedicated team of 1 to 4 programmers can outperform the entire rest of the world in 99% of interesting cases. On page 3, for example,
The author seems to equate an increase in complexity with an increase in functionality. It's true to some extent, but it also makes maintenance harder. To maintain or even improve any software, you need people who understand that software and, more importantly, who understand each other's changes. Which is why it's so nice to have a small group who can meet and talk and make decisions together. And to be productive, those people have to have a really good reason to:
So far, I have seen these qualities mainly in commercial teams, with a few prominent exceptions in the open-source world.