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Editorial

Free Software Leadership 164

Posted by michael from the blood-toil-tears-and-wrist-pain dept.
GroundBounce writes: "An article at Advogato uses the recent resignation of Christoph Pfister from the Fink project to analyze and highlight the ways in which the free software community often alienates its leaders, and the differences between the Mac shareware and the greater free software communities."
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Free Software Leadership More

Free Software Leadership

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  • Well...it's a thankless job. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nijika ( 525558 ) on Friday November 16, 2001 @09:44AM (#2574152) Homepage Journal
    Know what I'm tired of? I'm tired of developers taking criticism so damn personally and not seeing it for what it is when they really shouldn't. (not to sound harsh, but really enough of the silly "artiste" type rants). If you're getting a lot of heat and you can't take it, it's probably best to step back quietly.

    I think one of the secrets of staying sane in Open Source is learning how to ignore people! Just ignore them, you're right, you have NO OBLIGATION TO THEM. You DON'T have to cater to everyone's silly little whim. Learn to use the D key when people are e-mailing you personally and not the support mailing lists and news groups like they should if they had 1/4 of a brain!

    Man, if you can't ignore people you're in the wrong community. And if you're not writing the software for yourself... then what the hell are you doing?

    Chris, thanks for all the hard work and all, but you'll hear no violins from me.

    • A new slogan!
      Open source : If you can't ignore people you're in the wrong community!

      :-P
    • I'm tired of developers taking criticism so damn personally and not seeing it for what it is when they really shouldn't. (not to sound harsh, but really enough of the silly "artiste" type rants). If you're getting a lot of heat and you can't take it, it's probably best to step back quietly.

      While I agree that a certain amount of backbone with regards to criticism is necessary to grow as a creative type, there are some people who are so unschooled at constructive criticism that if I were a developer, and all the feedback I was getting was "this suxors" or whatnot, I'd probably leave in a fury, too.

      In a parallel to this, in creative writing workshops (and before people say anything about writing being artsy and coding being analytical, there is a HUGE amount of craft that goes into writing), the best criticism doesn't try to figure out whether or not something is good or bad, but instead tries to figure out what it IS, and what the developer has in mind, and what steps need to be taken to get from where it is now to where the developer wants to go with it.

      That's not to say that end-user criticism isn't necessary -- of course it is. But that's an entirely different level of criticism that developers need, and usually, that's not helpful in the design stages. Usually, in an attempt to sound open-minded about their work, a person will welcome any and all criticism, and that's a bit of a mistake if the person doesn't know what sorts of grains of salt to take with every bit of advice they get. You have to try to meet them halfway.

      This is just general stuff I've picked up, probably not applicable to this particular situation.

    • The thing is, it takes a certain type of person to run a project which is big, but offers little tangible reward beyond knowing you did it. That type of person is first and foremost enthusiastic. They also tend to have an unusually high level of skill and/or talent in the area concerned. And they also tend to be people who care about doing a good job.

      Such people will automatically take some responsibility for the project they oversee. When people slam the project, or worse yet, slam the volunteer running it with personal criticisms, it hurts. You can say "it shouldn't" or "ignore it" all you like, it still hurts. People capable of ignoring such criticism completely are rarely enthusiastic or skilled enough to be there in the first place.

      Sometimes, inevitably, it gets too much. After months of putting effort in, without a drop of credit, these people crack and leave. What do you expect? The least you could do is respect their wish to have their say, just once, as they bow out. They've earned that right, and you have no right to have a go at them for it.

      I've been in a similar situation, though not in a software context. I know how this guy feels. I'm betting you haven't, and you'd look at things a whole lot differently if you had. As you say, it's a thankless job. Maybe that's because people like you are too busy having a go to say "thank you".

      • Hmm, I personally feel very warm and fuzzy inside when I use a former version and think; in the new version I made this so much better! When the application is generally praised, I feel the praise as well. When someone walks away cursing the app I feel I have to fix it, not feel depressed.
        And most of all; users bad feedback lies on the level of 1% verses peer developers feedback. I don't care that noone has big banners with my name, or even that (quite likely) nobody knows my name! I like programming, and I like the application I am writing. Thats all there is to it!

        A relatively unknown KWord developer...

  • OSS-Leaders (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pete-classic ( 75983 ) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Friday November 16, 2001 @09:46AM (#2574160) Homepage Journal
    I (being an alienated former project leader) have put together a mailing list I call OSS-Leaders [hutnick.com].

    I'm still trying to get it off the ground, but there are one or two guys you may have heard of on the list . . .

    The idea is to provide a place for project leaders to exchange thoughts and ideas strictly with their peers. I hope to distill some of this discussion into some sort of "OSS Project Leadership HOWTO."

    If you lead (or recently lead) an OSS project, check it out.

    -Peter
    • What's the point of making the archive private? If you want people to start subscribing/posting on your list, the first thing to do is to make the archive available.
    • flame on: "strictly w/ their peers"?!? wtf kind of elitist claptrap is that? oh i see, that's the source of the alienation and angst, and thus necessary to maintain the neurotic complex. beautiful.
      • I'm sort of surprised by this response.

        There is nothing elitist about it. OSS project leaders have a common set of problems, and nowhere in particular to discuss those problems amongst them (or our) selves.

        Would it be elitist to have a Python mailing list with a policy that you must be a Python programmer to join? "Please don't discuss C++ (or Natalie Portman, or whatever) on our Python list", "awww, you're an elitist bastard 'cause you won't let me ask about C++ inheritance on your Python list!" WTF?

        Now, this is usually enforced by social pressure, which is fine. The OSS-Leaders list is different for two reasons. First, most project leaders are on several noisy lists, and already receive more email than they can really cope with. Therefore, for this project to be successful we have to have pretty much pure signal to fit into our member's day. Second, one of the "hot topics" is "how do I cope with a developer who is . . ." The leader of a project can't really ask that sort of question on an open list, since to members of that project it would probably be obvious who he was talking about, and would probably make things worse, not better.

        It seems like the prevailing opinion on /. that "if it isn't a free-for-all it's automatically bad" and I just don't get that.

        Anyway, the bottom line is that our mailing list is exclusive (in the literal sense) for reasons more like those of a support group than of a country club.

        -Peter
        • Of course that depends on how you define "project." Anybody can start an "open source project" with 50 lines of code and a sourceforge account.
          • That's true. I think I use the terms "credible" and "bona fide" on the site. The hip-pocket definition I have been working under is:

            1. A working (maybe alpha, maybe not feature-complete, but working) version of the package must be available under as OSS license.
            2. The package must be non-trivial. (A perl script that finds email addresses in a text file doesn't cut it.)
            3. At least three developers involved, including the leader.

            What specifically doesn't qualify is a package (no matter how sweet or complete) written by one person, or a package that is vapor, no matter how cool the idea, and even if you have fifty developers "working on it."

            While I haven't spelled this out on the site, it is the guideline I have been operating under.

            -Peter
  • Muuuuhhhaaaaahahahah.

    Not to trivialize it, but from most accounts it sounded like the "Fink dude" was in a "Funk".

    He needed a break, so for however long is needed;
    "Run fast, run far" and return when you are ready.

  • "This Cat" (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by 1alpha7 ( 192745 )

    The "cat" shit is really irritating. He needs to either get an editor or lose the "clever" shit.

    1Alpha7

  • interesting point the author makes.. smoking _good_ crack can lead to deficincies in software. who woulda thought...

    (note to ms executives: start feeding the clans the _bad_ crack, not the _good_ crack)

  • Feedback as repayment (Score:3, Troll)

    by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Friday November 16, 2001 @09:52AM (#2574182)
    There are an awful lot of small, dead, open source projects out there. I was looking today on Sourceforge for something and row after row of 0.0% project activity hits came up. Maybe this is to do with attention spans, or maybe for smaller projects it is tough putting GPL code out there.

    A GPL-ed open source app [nographer.com] that I wrote has so far had >1200 downloads in 2 months, yet only six people have fed anything back (five of them were complementary). Admittedly this is on Windows, where maybe there are cultural differences.

    When you are charging for your work you can at least look at the cash and feel that you are doing a good job; if you are deliberately setting out to give your work away then all there is in the way of repayment is feedback or help. Maybe that makes people feel uncomfortable to the extent they might rather have paid for the software?

    • Another Cause (Score:2, Interesting)

      by NitsujTPU ( 19263 )
      Another cause of this is, not to be offensive to anybody out there, the heterogenous nature of the talent in the open source community.

      My experience has been that unless I knew the people that I tried to develop with something ahead of time (IE, someone I chatted with regularly on perlmonks or irc or something), the odds were that I would end up with a few really talented people and a lot of people with little talent (but much ego), and a rather precarious social situation.

      In the end it comes down to a shutdown in progress so as not to bruise any egos. Eventually with everybody packing up and going home.

      Also, since nobody closese, scraps, and deletes projects on sourceforge, there are a good number that are just out there for the web space that will never actually change again, or that failed long ago that were never removed.

      Oh well, it's still a good system.
    • A GPL-ed open source app [nographer.com] that I wrote has so far had >1200 downloads in 2 months, yet only six people have fed anything back (five of them were complementary). Admittedly this is on Windows, where maybe there are cultural differences.

      It's not just Windows. The big secret of Open Source, the one Eric Raymond doesn't want to talk about, is that most users, even of Linux, are not programmers. With that in mind, most of the OSS philosophy is set on its ear.
      • With that in mind, most of the OSS philosophy is et on its ear.


        I don't think the OSS Philosophy is based upon the assumption that all of the users are programmers. Rather, it is based upon the assumption that if a user happens to be a programmer, the code is available for peer review. If 1% of 1000 users are coders, that's still 10 coders.

        And a single skilled coder can "feed" an unbounded number of users.

        • Besides this, I know several people who are not coders, but still can tweak a program to make a minor modification. And even for those with zero programming knowledge, if the program is open source you know you could find someone to fix it if there's a relatively simple problem and the original author is out of business or otherwise not interested.
      • I always thought that the Free Software philosophy didn't require users to be programmers. On the contrary, I believe Free Software is as much about turning the developers and users into co-owners of software as anything. That is to say, when the business model shifts from the software/content as widget-for-sale model to a relationship model (i.e. support, feature requests, customization, etc), the users end up benefitting from what is *not* a zero sum game. There are very few losers in this plan, except companies like Microsoft whose primary source of revenue is initial license fees (and even they are working hard to make sure that their income doesn't remain dependent on widget sales-- they aren't that stupid).

        I think the real problem, so far, has been that most Free Software is not sufficiently user friendly so that a non-programmer can easily install, configure, and use the software. I'd say the last two years, though, have seen great strides in eliminating this complaint. There are a few outstanding areas where some technical know-how is probably more necessary on a Free Software system than on Windows, but that has mostly to do with hardware manufacturers who only produce Windows drivers and only grudgingly (or not at all) work with Linux/BSD types (usually their level of support involves releasing some specs, but not providing a lot of actual assistance-- how many device makers give out the source code to their own drivers to Free developers in an effort to get Free drivers into Linux?).
        • ...most Free Software is not sufficiently user friendly so that a non-programmer can easily install, configure, and use the software. I'd say the last two years, though, have seen great strides in eliminating this complaint.


          I have seen the opposite trend. For years I have used LILO, with no problem. Then someone invented this GRUB thing, whose main purpose seems to give a "graphic" interface to the system loader. I went through three different sets of CD-ROMS, three different machines, nine installs in total, and came back to LILO.
          Conectiva 7, Mandrake 8.1, and RedHat 7.2 all seem to have added a lot of totally unnecessary "beautiful-and-easy-to-use" features whose only effect is to break what were excellent distributions.

          What comes next, an Open Source paper clip popping up in Koffice, giving you "helpful" hints?

          • Oh come on. We both know you were trying to do something fancy. Let's not pretend that you are in any way an "average user" in the traditional sense of the word. :)

            Frankly, if the next KDE incorporates the little helpful smiley app I've seen as part of the distribution, there are those average users who will consider that a major plus. Average users cannot bend far enough forward for Microsoft as it puts these "features" into their, um, OS.

            But I sympathize. I didn't have any problems with GRUB, but I am annoyed that RH decided to put in /opt and /misc directories that contain absolutely no files. We need less clutter on the root /, not more. But again, I'm not the average user who will navigate around the filesystem using the desktop in KDE or GNOME (or Konqueror or Nautilus(?)). I'm ticked because now /misc interferes with my ability to type /m{tab} and get straight into /mnt.
        • The trouble is when expert programmers aren't expert users- or when implementing user stuff isn't as much fun as implementing programmers stuff.

          I've been bitten by this myself (still am, to an extent- I suspect that's inevitable). I develop mastering software for the Mac, which is GPLed. I don't have any help with it, that's not why I'm GPLing, but I do have connections with some serious mastering engineers who occasionally have time to look at it or talk about it socially. One of my motivations from early on was to give it a more text-based interface in many places so that I could get more resolution and control range out of important parameters, and so I had three gain trim controls: left, right, and a further trim to adjust both. All were in 'ratio' form- '2' meant twice the amplitude, '1.2' meant 1.2X the amplitude, and so on. This was a convenience for implementing the normalize function and further gain adjustments.

          It took many, many versions until I did the obvious and labeled the controls in decibels- because that was a very important USER fix, but it wasn't any fun as a programmer fix. It didn't make the output act any differently, or do anything exciting or fun- all it was, was a process of putting the parameter through two transforms into and out of the twitchy logarithmic measure known as decibels.

          However, finally buckling down and doing it meant that the program inhabited the land of 'users' of mastering software more, and the land of 'developers' less. It seems to me you have to have some of both- lean too far towards the land of users and you start developing interfaces with buttons that are photorealistic and throb while the guts of the code goes nowhere, and lean too far towards the land of developers and the interface is a batch file read in reverse hungarian notation ;)

          But it is useful to remain aware that while you are a better programmer than the user, the user may well be a better user of your tool than you are- and may have very urgent priorities that you don't understand. And if you totally ignore this- you're just wanking :)

      • most users, even of Linux, are not programmers

        This is a GOOD thing. The majority of people should not be let near a programming language as they don't have the ability to think logically and break down problems into their components in order to write functioning programs.

      • The big secret of Open Source, the one Eric Raymond doesn't want to talk about, is that most users, even of Linux, are not programmers. With that in mind, most of the OSS philosophy is set on its ear.

        If only a few of your users are willing to hack on the program a bit, you're still getting advantages. Even if your users aren't keen on hacking, but are able to provide details bug reports, that's a big advantage.

        The GNOME, KDE, Apache, and Linux projects seem to be doing well despite most of their users not being programmers.

        That also ignores the benefits of OSS for users. A company using OSS can hire someone to make changes they need. Many people can badger friend programmers into making small changes, much like I might badger some of friends into a bit of automobile work.

        Most users not being programmers does not set the OSS philosphy on its ear. If no users were programmers, you might have something. And even then, it doesn't change any of the Free Software philosophy (as opposed to Open Source).

      • This is a GOOD thing. The majority of people should not be let near a programming language as they don't have the ability to think logically and break down problems into their components in order to write functioning programs.

        The GNOME, KDE, Apache, and Linux projects seem to be doing well despite most of their users not being programmers.

        Yes, yes, yes, but you both missed the point. Someone was complaining because he didn't get much feedback on his code; only a few people submitted improvements. The point is that this is to be expected, because the great majority of computer users are not programmers.

        OSS advocates routinely bring up points about how millions of eyes look for bugs, and how if you don't like something then you can just fix it. Those points are bogus, because they are assuming that the intended audience is not only made up of programmers, but that those programmers are bored enough that they decide to going spelunking around hundreds of thousands of lines of code they don't understand. And that they have the gall to think they can make seat of the pants fixes without a clear picture of the overall architecture.
        • From what you have said, I'm sure you have not submitted any patches before. Here's something you should know. I think there's a problem with your assumption that programmers submit patches ONLY because they are bored, have too much time, and are totally passionate about the program and know every detail of the code.

          The truth,

          1. You don't need to understand that whole program structure in order to fix a bug. you look at pieces of it that's causing problems. As long as the code is reasonably documented and well interfaced within, it shouldn't be too hard to find that piece.

          2. People submit patches not because they are crazy about the program, but because it bothers them enough to get off thier butt and fix it for good. In short, to the patcher, the patch SAVES him a lot of time and trouble. Say, if some bug makes you restart your apache every 3-5 days because some part of it breaks, you would really want to fix it so that you don't have to restart it again. What drives programmers, especially UNIX programmers, is convenience.
          • 1. You don't need to understand that whole program structure in order to fix a bug. you look at pieces of it that's causing problems. As long as the code is reasonably documented and well interfaced within, it shouldn't be too hard to find that piece.

            And I'm sure you run a full regression test suite after making such a change, right? Is there even such a suite for programs other than gcc? Changes made without thorough testing are scary to the highest degree.
        • I think the correction is that hundreds and thousands of people use the software and can, usually, easily and openly submit bug-reports (in the least) and patches (at best). Its one of the things that is tangentially mentioned in In the Beginning was the Command Line [cryptonomicon.com] as a reason for using Open Source tools. Everything's out there for public view, warts and all and generally someone has created a patch or a work-around, or will soon, to get you back on your way to productivity. The Mozilla project, for instance, just wants people to use the damn thing and find out when and how it breaks. Luckily people, myself included, have responded.

          While I do have a CS degree, I don't always have enough understanding on how to fix the problem that I have found. However, my discovery of the bug (especially if it is unique) coupled with a detailed and repeatable description and test case can be a boon to developers who will hopefully have enough familiarity with the code to find the problem and correct it.

        • OSS advocates routinely bring up points about how millions of eyes look for bugs

          I don't think I've seen the number "millions" bantered about much. There is a line in Cathedral & Bazaar, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." But to me that doesn't imply insane masses of developers swarming over code like flies on ripe meat. Instead, from what I can tell, it implies interest. And not even interest in "all" code -- C&B's entire point is that you have to do things to be a successful open source project, and only those successful ones get the benefits.

          And that they have the gall to think they can make seat of the pants fixes without a clear picture of the overall architecture.

          Sometimes you can. Don't forget that lots of sourceforge projects are under 5000 lines of code -- you don't need much grasp of architecture to delve into something that small. Hell, I just made two code contributions to the faqts.com Web site, and I hadn't even seen the code. I just knew that if it was PHP, my code snippets could be dropped into the files where needed, so I wrote them up and emailed them in. So you may be right about your main point -- there really aren't crazy-big masses of developers eagerly waiting to work for everyone else. But there is a more subtle point that still holds true -- there are power-users and uber-geeks who gravitate toward projects of interest, and an Open Source project can capitalize on those people in some interesting new ways.

    • Well if most people are like me, they have downloaded your app, installed it, maybe even managed to run it, and then realized that they had no use for it, or that it didn't do what they wanted at all ... so why would they contribute?

      I looked at your page, it looks interesting, however there's no shortage of good newsreaders out there, so it's not like you're fulfilling a dire need.

      OTOH if your app was cross platform and could run through Apache, it could serve as a groupware tool.
    • A GPL-ed open source app [nographer.com] that I wrote has so far had >1200 downloads in 2 months, yet only six people have fed anything back (five of them were complementary). Admittedly this is on Windows, where maybe there are cultural differences.

      Get used to it. This is typical. I've had 15,000 downloads of my Java FTP client, and now it is stable get around one email for each 200 downloads. Earlier versions got around one email per 50-100 downloads, but had some bugs and lacked some features.


    • If you take a closer look at those projects, you will find that a lot of the project descriptions tend to sound something like "this project will implement a brand-new, object-oriented, buzzword-compliant operating system with a really cool graphical user interface, all written in a new programming language that I haven't actually designed yet, but it should be really cool and object-oriented."

      Annoying people with big ideas and no talent start these projects, and assume that everyone else on the internet is going to do all the real work for them so that they can take the credit.
      No wonder they fail.

      As for the vast majority of people who download your hard-written code and don't feed anything back, don't feel too bad about that. Most of them are morons, and couldn't give you a single useful suggestion if you put a gun to their head. Just be glad they don't pester you with their "ideas".
    • I recently released a new version of the open source project I work on (TiMidity for OS/2, see web page). Dispite being a minor update that I didn't think many people would be interrested in I got quite a bit of feedback thanking me for my work. Much more then I ever got before.

      The reason was that there was a bug that prevented the program from reading the configuration file properly and they where asking about it. I've put up an update I haven't got any feedback since.

    • How about this idea: If you're making a GPL'd program (or using a similar license), why not release your program on a CD? (I'm saying this in general, regardless of what the specific program was that we were talking about.)

      Even if your program is a small utility, like, oh, sed. (That's just the first thing that came to mind. It could be any program.) Compile your program for every system it's designed to work under, and with the most common compile-time options for those systems (if any). Then, put all those binaries in a well organized hierarchy on a CD. In addition, put the "stable" sources (the ones the binaries were built from) on the CD, along with any required libraries, support files and whatever. Put some good documentation on the CD, in a bunch of different formats. Put "example" configurations, programs or whatever that use your program on the CD. Put "marketing" materials on the CD, such as project goals and mission statement, cast of characters (in alphabetical order, with a short bio, job description, etc--in all, a 500 Kbyte file), and whatever else you can think of. In short, even if the program is a 1 Kbyte binary, fill a CD to the brim with any materials you can dream of that are even remotely related to this program. Of course, things should be well organized so that the CD is a marketable, first class product.

      The best part is that most of this can be done by non-programmers who want to get involved in a project. (Imagine if you put a list of 500 people on the CD for a program that took one guy two hours to write.)

      Package this CD nicely in a nice glossy box (designed by a graphic artist whose name is in your credits), include a nice thick book (make a distribution deal with a publisher to distribute their well-written book with your program), include a Certificate of Authenticity (it doesn't have to be expensive like Microsoft's certificates but it should look reasonably professional) and a copy of the GPL (or whatever license), and charge $89.95 (US) for it.

      This might sound ridiculous, but believe me, when people pay good money for something (as long as you charge a fair price), they WILL respect and appreciate it much more than if they had gotten it for free. This is not a joke! It's a marketing fact. And if someone asks, "Why should I pay for something I can download for free?" You answer, "You get a book, a CD, and 1 year of email-based tech support. Besides, you support its further development, documentation, distribution, etc."

      Oh well.

    • When I was (along with some other people, but mostly me) running CVS [cvshome.org] development, our most popular download was the Windows client (command line at the time, although WinCVS [wincvs.org] later got popular). Yet very little of the mailing list traffic, submitted patches, and the like were for Windows. I suppose one could point to reasons like whether people had the right compilers for Windows (cygwin wasn't as mature then as it is now, so we had both cygwin and Visual C++ ports). But I still would vote for the cultural explanation. The model of Windows freeware or shareware is basically a gift from the author to the user, whereas Unix free software is more often seen as a (potential) collaboration in which the users contribute.

  • The problem is (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Chardish ( 529780 ) <chardish AT gmail DOT com> on Friday November 16, 2001 @09:55AM (#2574192) Homepage
    It only takes one stupid decision or one time where your development community has a good idea you try to repress for your community to decide they don't respect you anymore.

    Bottom line? In OSS there are no leaders, there are only people more knowledgeable and experienced than others. If you try to lead and you fail then you suppress ideas, and that causes forking, and then your project is doomed.

    -Evan

  • This isn't a GPL issue, its an ego issue. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Friday November 16, 2001 @09:55AM (#2574194) Homepage


    Ummmmm, it's already been established that OpenOSX was in no way in violation of the GPL. Cristoph just got his ego bruised when he realised that releasing his code under the GPL does not automatically guarantee that he'll be given credit.

    Two problems with this.

    1) If he wanted to be given credit for his work that badly, he should have done his homework, and perhaps released his code under a BSD license, which guarantees that he'll be mentioned as the original author. It's not OpenOSX's fault he didn't use his head.

    2) If he's in it for the fame and popularity, and not for the idea that the GPL ( and the entire open source movement ) represents, Cristoph should find another line of work -- And apparently, he has.

    Cheers,
    • Cristoph just got his ego bruised when he realised that releasing his code under the GPL does not automatically guarantee that he'll be given credit

      This is wrong, how many programs from the FSF have you seen whithout the FSF credits ? Let's see some points. Firstly from the GPL-Howto [fsf.org] :

      Whichever license you plan to use, the process involves adding two elements to each source file of your program: a copyright notice (such as "Copyright 1999 Linda Jones"), and a statement of copying permission, saying that the program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (or the Lesser GPL).

      GPL is not public domain, there is a copyright owner.
      Secondly, from the GPL [fsf.org]:

      1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an
      appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty[...]

      and

      2.b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

      given that

      0. This License applies to any program or other work which
      contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License.

      So the facts are :

      • a GPL'd thing as an owner mentionned in the copyright notice
      • the notice must remain accross the distribution chain
    • I think that Christoph is a little confused about what the GPL actually says.

      That said, what is it that you think drives (or should drive) Free Software development? There are clearly easier ways to get rich. Even easier ways to get rich writing software. There isn't love or sex involved as far as I can tell.

      I mean, it would be great to live in a world of fluffy bunnies and pure altruism, but I think that on this planet ego is a major component of the drive to create Free Software. (ESRs "gain status by giving" gift culture explanation if you like.)

      RMS gives a lot of explanations why Free Software benefits everyone, but I don't think that he ever said that you shouldn't do it for ego gratification. He sure seems to.

      -Peter

  • Ugh...its apparently "Idiot Mac User Week" on /. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Friday November 16, 2001 @09:58AM (#2574206) Homepage


    This guy and the bonehead who blames UPS for his shitty packaging job should get together and go bowling. After all, they both have exactly what the other wants. One has a working computer system, but no fame. The other has fame, but a dead computer system.

    Sounds like a beautiful friendship if you ask me.

  • logical fallacies (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In general, most successful open source developers have similar fairly similar strategies (point the clueless to documentation, ignore the worst offenders), and pet peeves (people who don't know th first thing about the system and ask idiotic questions about picky details, people who complain about a bug publicly but don't report it to the developer). My experience as a long-time clueless newbie has been that documentation in free software projects is almost impossible to understand, usually starts about half-way through, presuming a good deal of understanding of the system, instead of at the beginning. Documentation is especially a problem for Mac users who are used to getting the documentation through the help menu on the application itself rather than by using man or reading README. Also reporting bugs is very intimidating when the only way to report is often to send an email to the lead developer who is likely to ignore you if you don't use the right terminology. OSX Unix developers should post readmes and man pages very prominently on the dowload websites, and install bugzilla to make reporting bugs less traumatic.
  • Geeze, the slashcode guys trying to make a point?

    For thise of you that missed this the first time... click here [slashdot.org]

  • Let's be realistic... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by curtis ( 18867 )
    This is not an issue that plagues OSS, it is one that has been present in every workplace in the world. Who has ever worked in an environment where everyone agreed all the time? I personally left a company after disagreeing with some of the stances taken by a manager of mine, and that was in the closed source, commercial world.

    The only difference I see is that given the nature of OSS the players tend to have some very strong feelings about the subject material or they wouldn't have started the project to begin with. No one would undertake a project for zero pay, long hours, and constant hand (and brain) cramps just out of the good nature of their heart. They start they projects because they feel they need the tool at hand. When others join the cause, the goals of the project migrate with the masses; which is not always the exact direction the founder may have envisioned.

    Given the founders original vision of the project, and the nature of OSS being so visable and publicized today, any falling out amoungst the developers is going to be louder than a closed source model.

    But to sum it up; this happens everywhere, it is just that it is more visable for public projects!

  • Sounds like I got lucky... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by larien ( 5608 ) on Friday November 16, 2001 @10:20AM (#2574267) Homepage Journal
    The only time I ever led an open source project was for the Solaris plugin for XMMS [xmms.org]. I got zero flames during the duration of doing it, and plenty compliments (thanks for writing this, etc). Other people came along with problems, but they were generally valid complaints. Very few people had stupid questions; those I just pointed to the FAQ.

    Of course, mine was a fairly small project with less visibility, but I was still getting over 1000 downloads (as per the web logs) of each new version, so there were a significant number of users. Actually, the number of downloads helped give me a nice warm fuzzy feeling; "look at all these people using something I helped write!".

    In the end, I passed control to the central XMMS team as I moved jobs and didn't have a SPARC at my desk. However, that was always my end goal, to have it in such a state that it could be integrated.

    • I'd hazard a guess and say the only people using your plugin are developers/engineers/sysadmins who have Sparcs on their desktop at work, and not the same type of home users who would flame an author about his/her software. Nevertheless, I am one of those people who's used the Solaris XMMS plugin and I must say thank you for writing it! ;)


      siri

  • Its on http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-baza ar/homesteading/

    Our cool "cat" needs to think through the whole issue of what OSS is about. The point of OSS is that its a gift. Usually you don't even know who you are giving it to. So why worry if some poor sap is trying to cover the cost of burning CSs by re-issuing your code. Provided you have the GPL, you have lost nothing. And really, how much money will the CD burner make, if any?

    If you want nice feedback, stop wasting time coding and give people $10 bills. They always say thanks and never complain about the artwork.
  • The effects of this sort of infighting vary somewhat depending on the group.

    If you take a group of true fruitcakes, say, the UFO Investigators, they basically "eat their own young" when it comes to competition, grandstanding, ego trips, etc.

    Software developers are not so flakey, of course, although some folks would argue otherwise.

    Many folks are rather ignorant of this sort of thing, and get blindsided by it. Of course, management books and courses sort of assume that every one is on the same team, and rarely look at the angle where there are competing interests, some of them sometimes rather juvenile.

  • You guys don't know shareware on the Mac (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zoop ( 59907 ) on Friday November 16, 2001 @10:52AM (#2574389)
    Apparently you Linux types think "Hey, check out my L337 Hearts shareware for Windoze, a mere $117.85 and it's yours to play again after a 6 day trial" is what shareware is or should be.

    Bullhockey. Shareware on the Mac, which, contrary to advogato's assertion, cares mightily about attribution and credit, to the point that they use, oh, I dunno...COPYRIGHT licenses to ensure they get credit.

    Most of this shareware, and a boatload of freeware, some put out by commercial companies, is not time-limited and requires the Mac community to express appreciation in a way that apparently the Napsterites can't be bothered--you know, paying for it? You can use Graphic Converter (a tool that gives the GIMP a run for its money) without ever paying for it. However, I coughed up the $35 to the lone guy who maintains it because it's a damn useful program and has helped me out of spots where Photoshop has failed. In turn, he maintains a release schedule and responsiveness that puts the majority of open source projects I've seen to shame. Oh, and my license is good in perpetuity.

    Do I get to see the code? With some freeware programs, yes. Others, no. But then, my coding skills lie more toward Web programming and Java, so I'm not sure I'd be able to do that much with the code, and here's a nasty little truth: neither do most people in the Linux community.

    The communities are similar in many points: a small group of programmers do the bulk of the work. Most users don't know how to program and are frequently clueless. Most users tend to report bugs and nothing else. Most users tend not to contribute patches. Some offer to and are brushed away by the maintainer/programmer.

    However there are some differences the Linux community might not like to think about. And as a 3-years plus Linux user, I can say that in general, Mac shareware is far less buggy and thousands of times more usable than its Free Software compatriots, despite the lack of peer review of the code. Mac users tend to show appreciation to these programmers in a way that Linux types tend to only show to Red Hat or some other distribution maintainer, not the project maintainers: paying for it. Not everybody, not even most people, but enough that some of these packages have been around over a decade and are still being developed despite relying on single person.

    Am I saying the Mac shareware way is better? Not really--it's better at certain things, but has weaknesses that Free Software doesn't. But it has strenghts that Free Software doesn't, either. To see it mindlessly bashed by pots referring to the dark coloration of kettles has been irritating, to say the least.

    The whole tone of this discussion has been characterized by ignorant flaming, starting with CP's note and emails and continuing with Slashdot's libelous headline. You really might try to understand the Mac way before you start whining...after all, you're still trying to copy our user interface quality after all these years--we might have something to bring to the table. We instinctively know good UI, something that the Windoze commuity, from which most of you come, does not.

    You can learn from other cultures, or you can flame them. Guess which one you're becoming as guilty of as the users who whined without bug reports to CP?
    • This is an extrememly excellent point! Please mod the parent up!

      Just because a program has the name shareware attached to it, doesn't mean you need to cough up money $$$$$.
      Most "shareware" programs just have a simple screen (a minor annoyance) that allows the coder to announce who wrote it. Nothing more. And then states that if you want the registered version, with out the minor annoyance then please cough up $5.00 or somthing like that.

      An excellent example is WinZip for Mircosoft OS computers.
      You can download it for free and use it as much as you want. But there is a minor annoyance screen that asks if you wish the register it. That's all. That is a shareware program.

      I see it as a way for a developer to still live by his / her "software should be free" ideas but also a way to maybe make a little money for his / her time. And we should all take heed... If you like and use a program... Pay the few bucks and honor the coder.

      • That's the whole speech/beer thing.

        WinZip is distributed in this way because it's a promotional exercise, and it's worked - the .ZIP format is huge, and WinZip pretty much the only way for Windows users to access compressed files.

        Naming no names, but having a monopoly is more important that the money you make from it, if you take a long-term view.

    • And what I've noticed is that it's usually at commercial prices. Low-end commercial prices, to be sure, but it ain't cheap. And despite your implicit assertion to the contrary, freeware applications of any value are few and far between.

      This has been one of my disappointments with my iBook. You can accuse me of being cheap, with some justification--but I look at it as being honest: I don't want to use unregistered shareware, so I'll certainly look for freeware first. And I usually won't find it. I usually won't even find up-to-date ports of common cross-platform applications like Vim and Emacs.

      Granted, I've had other disappointments like the fact that MacOS 9 isn't much more advanced internally than System 7 was, that the iBook's battery design seems to be flamingly stupid, and that MacOS X is targeted to machines much faster than mine (note I didn't say that was a flaw, just a disappointment). But the Mac community as a whole seems to be less interested in the 'gift economy' than Windows programmers, much less Linux and BSD folks.

      • Non demo-limited shareware is the Mac 'gift economy' as it stands. It's not like they don't have the technical means to time-limit or spray ads in your face or install spyware, and it's well known that only a tiny percentage of shareware users end up paying.

        The Windows ecology is far worse. Not only is quality shareware few and far between, it's all spammed and there's hardly any freeware worth using. (Big exception is PowerArchiver and Open Source projects.) I often find myself digging ancient DOS programs out of Simtel just to find a freeware tool that does this or that.

    • Do I get to see the code? With some freeware programs, yes. Others, no. But then, my coding skills lie more toward Web programming and Java, so I'm not sure I'd be able to do that much with the code, and here's a nasty little truth: neither do most people in the Linux community.


      The fact that you have a use or not for the source is secondary to availability. You might not have the skill to correct a bug in a software you use but somebody else probably does. If we take your image converter as an a exemple, what happen if the maintainer [die | loose interest | sellout | etc] ? The software is still useful as-is, but a new filter could not be added to the package. With OSS, as long as there is a user community big enough to carry a few developper, update and new feature can happen. Often it does not, but with binary software it NEVER does.

      About the instinctiveness of the UI, this is a slippery slope but let me make a shot. Use of an UI is an acquired skill. There is no instinct involved. What you find instinctive the next guy may find confusing. I personnally find MacOS 8 (the only one I used) confusing. But again, if I would have used it for a couple a week it would have become second nature to me, like Windoze and most Linux WM are.

      Rereading myself, there is nothing imaginative in this post. The code availability argument is one the pillar of OSS advocacy and the UI stuff had been beaten to death multiple time in the past. In fact, it is so old that quote of flamewar from the beginning of the 90's are part of my fortune file. Hope it won't start another one.

      • Mod Up The Parent of this!!!

        As Etyenne says, it's nothing original, but



        IT'S TRUE


        (If that matters on /.)

  • The fact that all this effort is not rewarded with money is the major shortcoming of the free software process. There have been quite a number of attempts to fix this, but few have been successful, and of those that have, most don't seem to generalize.

    No, it's not about money. Those who think it is and try to squeeze money out of their neighbors by giving away booby traps are doomed to fail. Sorry, it's about sharing common tasks and making things that don't suck. Communities that are bassed on anything else will go the way of M$ eventually.

    The evanescent rewards of free software are a major factor in the relatively high turnover in projects.

    Not all projects have high turnover. I'll just call attention to the current drought of leaders. Many of the "big names" who would have been listed as leaders a couple of years ago are no longer very active in actual free software development, and there isn't much in the way of new blood. Thank God we've still got Linus.

    Huh? What's a big name? While peer recognition is nice, once again, that's not what it's about. The folks making things like NE2000 drivers out at NASA are just as important to me as anyone else. I appreciate their efforts, but I have a small brain and I'll never be able to remember all the names. Why should I expect anything more of anyone else?

    Mac OS X gives an excellent example of why leadership is so badly needed. Apple could easily have taken a leadership role, and presented a compelling vision of how software should be packaged for OS X. Instead, its own efforts are very weak. ... Apple also provides some links to Unix software, but as far as I can tell makes no effort to ensure that any of it is integrated nicely.

    Apple does not seem to get it yet, and that is too bad. They have a great deal of tallent at work and they have produced some outstanding hardware. If they ever get what free sofware is all about they will sell much more of it. Perversly, by giving their users freedom they will save themselves from working for someone else, like Bill Gates. Propriatory junk never communicates well and will never "integrate". Apple is in a good position to do great things. I'm waiting for them to get it.

    • No, it's not about money. Those who think it is and try to squeeze money out of their neighbors by giving away booby traps are doomed to fail. Sorry, it's about sharing common tasks and making things that don't suck. Communities that are bassed on anything else will go the way of M$ eventually

      What the hell do you mean by going the way of M$? As far as I can tell, they've done quite well for themselves, most people use their software and whether you like it or not, there is a pretty vibrant community around their products. Squeeze money out of their neighbours indeed... Just out of interest do you have to work for your living or are you a student?
      • yes, I have a job where I have to use M$ crapware whether I like it or not. The roll out of Win2k and XP is breaking everything there again. Print methods, macros, the whole suck works. The resentment is large. M$ is dead because everyone knows they suck. It's only a matter of time before people get around them so that they can spend less time fooling with computer shit and more time doing their jobs.

        Apple is one of those companies that could displace M$. One way for them to do it is to just get free software. Trade software revenue for hardware and service revenue. The potential is as vast as M$ dissatisfaction.

  • Perhaps the problem is that the de-facto leader of the project is the person who initiated it; they might be a good developer but maybe they don't have the organizational/managerial/basic people skills to keep things going smoothly. This is one area (IMO) in which the traditional "corporate" system of separate management and development teams (at least potentially) has an advantage on the OSS model.
  • Agvogato misspelled his name and then apologized
    below in a comment to the article. Too bad they
    didn't edit the actual article.

  • Open Source success (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Stiletto ( 12066 ) on Friday November 16, 2001 @11:07AM (#2574460)

    From reading the first bunch of posts here, one would get the impression that leading an Open-Source project is miserable work. In case anyone cares, I'd like to submit a success story :-)

    A while back I posted a little code on the net. It was a tiny driver for my Matrox Marvel video capture card. I figured there might be SOMEONE out there who'd find it useful. Well, people grabbed it, started working with it (I only have one video capture card, so there were apparently problems on other people's sysems) and improving it. We set up a CVS server and a mailing list and more people got involved.

    After a while, I got kind of tired of the project. The driver has worked for me since day one, and I really didn't have much motivation to do any more coding or "lead" the project. Besides, several people that joined the project knew more about the code than me, so I figured I might as well quietly step away. The project [sourceforge.net]'s been going great and continues to grow. I still read the mailing list, but I haven't committed code in months.

    I guess the moral of the story is: There may come a time where you are tired of heading up a project, and the best thing to do is to let go of it, and leave it to the more capable (and more enthusiastic) people on the mailing list.

  • About open source and leadership... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Friday November 16, 2001 @11:10AM (#2574475)
    Sometimes I am wondering about the role of leadership in open source software. In a way, at least from my point of view, the leader is typically the chief developer. But isn't there a better way to do it?

    You might disagree, which is understandable, but I really think that the open source community could gain a bit by looking some more at the coporate model. (Yes, it does have its flaws, I'll be the first to admit. But there are some good things.)

    For example, you might want a project architect. His job isn't to write the code, but to establish the framework and overall direction of the project. The architect gives clear direction on which way the software is going and provides a blueprint for the design.

    Or, for example, someone who represents the user community. In contrast to the architect, this representative speaks for the users in terms of what features are most desired, and what bugs need to be squashed the most. And it shields developers from the maddening and schizophrenic voices of the community.

    An architect could take the requests of the users, and combine it into the overall vision of the project.

    I'm kind of making this up as I go here, but I see some value in the role of a software architect (who understands programming but does not churn code), and a single representative of the user community to deal with developers.

    Is this too insane, or niave?
    • You are getting close,
      but in corporate environments they use this military concept of lines.

      First you have first line of support : these are the guys that handle all the FAQ & stupid questions & flames and whatnot.

      Second line of support : they get questions from the first line of support where you actually have to look at the source code/tables to find out what is going on.

      Third line of support : they are the guys that rewrite code if the second line of support has found a new bug.

      I kind of cant belief that none of the bigger Open Source projects work like this.

      My 0.02 Euro.
    • > Is this too insane, or niave?

      Yes, it is by far too naive. Where are you going to take these 2 extra persons to work on your project? If it were as simple to attract people to the open source projects as you seem to think, my life would have been so much simpler. Unfortunately, it's all but impossible. BTW, I maintain (although, luckkly, not alone) 2 rather big projects (and a few small ones) so I know what I'm speaking about.

      The simple truth that many, if not all, programmers understand but few Slashdot posters do, is that there can perfectly well be many people interested in using project but none at all willing to contribute to it. And I don't speak [only of] programming but many other things such as helping with writing documentation, creating icons, testing, administrating the project home page, answering the users on the mailing lists and much more. Note that just about anybody can find something in this list [s]he could help with.

      In fact, the only area where we've got much of outside help was with translations probably because people feel strongly enough about their own language to motivate them to do some (not very inspiring, I admit) work. But it stays an exception.

      VZ
      • you speak about getting people interested, and I think that in itself is an art.
        The fact is that there are a lot of programmers like myself: we love OSS, the community idea, etc, but its kinda wierd to jump into a project...I wish there were a more standardized way to do it...It takes a lot of time and effort, and when we feel we don't click we go elsewhere.

        the other thing is that it can be daunting. When I crack open somebody elses code and its filled we wierd personalized contructs and lacks comments of any kind, it is really intimidating. If people would open up what they are doing and write code with another person reading it in mind, It would be a lot less irratating.
  • that a non-heirarchically managed project would tend to view "leaders" (in the traditional, managerial sense) as anathema. Meglomania is simply not needed, is a hindrance, and highly annoying.

    This isn't nessecarily "open source" because some open source projects are very heirarchical (BSD for example) and some are not (debian). The "leaders" of the debian project are elected, and generally there isn't alot of resentment. Meglomaniacs should stick to proprietary software, where a non-democratic structure is assumed.
  • The good thing about open source is that people hold strong opinions... The bad thing about open source is that people hold strong opinions... I really wonder how many people involved in open source ever heard "plays well with others"?
  • Leaders are, by definition, people who get others to do what is needed. Since, in the free software community, people do more or less what they want, leaders are completely unnecessary.

    What free software needs are not leaders, but coordinators and administrators, people who keep things organized. And this means hard work, such as maintaning the CVS tree, keeping track of updates, making sure the project website has the right links, etc.

    If you do all that work, and more, you are sure to be recognized as THE leader for the project. After all, who is it that puts people's names in the files?

  • I have read the source material (Christoph's resignation, his email exchanges with other folks).

    He responds with overt hostility and sarcasm to every attempt at sincere communication. He gives away his software and then blames the world for taking it. He goes out of his way to display self-righteous fury in response to clueless lusers who would benefit from an auto-responder pointing them to a FAQ.

    Larry Wall is a leader. Richard Stallman, in his own infuriating and dogmatic way, is a leader. Christoph Pfister, in spite of his gifts as a programmer, is no leader.

  • Hmm.. Interesting that all it takes is enough people to bitch, whine and moan to developers to get them to quit projects..

    One could wonder if some large corporation with tons of cash and no sense of ethics could hire people to just bitch and whine about software projects all day to its developers. Naaa.. We'd never see anything like that now, would we?

  • Just because a program has the name shareware attached to it, doesn't mean you need to cough up money $$$$$.

    Most "shareware" programs just have a simple screen (a minor annoyance) that allows the coder to announce who wrote it. Nothing more. And then states that if you want the registered version, with out the minor annoyance then please cough up $5.00 or somthing like that.

    An excellent example is WinZip for Mircosoft OS computers.

    You can download it for free and use it as much as you want. But there is a minor annoyance screen that asks if you wish the register it. That's all. That is a shareware program.

    I see it as a way for a developer to still live by his / her "software should be free" ideas but also a way to maybe make a little money for his / her time. And we should all take heed... If you like and use a program... Pay the few bucks and honor the coder.

  • Sheesh, are the authors missing the point ...

    The fact that all this effort is not rewarded with money is the major shortcoming of the free software process.

    While I no doubt share in their point regarding credibility, they must also understand the nature of free software. Simply releasing code alone is not sufficient enough an effort to reap monetary rewards. Free software has no such major shortcoming, you are confusing two completely different software-business models. Besides, if money from software is your end goal, why in the hell are you developing free software expecting that to be your motivational drive??
  • Alienation of the leaders ... yeah. I can see that happen, and have. Now, how about when the 'leaders' alienate the projects? Eric S. Raymond recently started slinging flames at the Pennmush [pennmush.org] folks, citing their lack of a GPL license as reason to threaten the developers with OSS community sanctions (which were never voted on by the OSI [opensource.org] board, btw), because they were using the words 'open' and 'source' in their license. A definition did follow. It read "meaning that the source is freely available and you can modify it however you like". But this wasn't good enough. I don't know if the OSI folks realize what ESR did when he sent that Nastygram(tm), but I'm more than willing to point out a portion of the damage done.

    Many developers decided not to support the OSI once they heard about this. I'm one of them. It's not worth our time or effort to stand behind a project that, while espousing lofty goals, stoops to such politically motiviated activities as attempting to hijack a common phrase (anyone else remember the Pilsbury vs whoever over 'bake-off' thing? I do).

    Ego? Maybe. I have no idea what sort of bug got into his pants. But this was really, really WRONG. Perhaps if ESR had sent an email asking for some sort of clarification of the license, instead of threatening sanctions against the Pennmush project right from the word go, things might have gone better. But, as it stands, the OSI now has an image very similar to that of any other corporate entity that starts any correspondence with threats and bullying tactics. I'm sure this is the sort of thing Micro$oft and other corporations love to see, and expected and hoped for, you know. Open Source eating its own young, biting its own tail off, that sort of thing.

    I feel I must pause to applaud. [golf clap] Way to go Mr.Raymond. Just let me know when I should start calling you Mr.Gates, OK?

    By the way, I think an open apology might be in order, from the entire OSI board, since ESR wrote his threats with the big Open Source Intimidation label all over them. Take responsibility, even if you won't accept blame.

    In case you're wondering, yes, this annoys me slightly. Cope.

  • From the article:

    Many of the "big names" who would have been listed as leaders a couple of years ago are no longer very active in actual free software development, and there isn't much in the way of new blood.

    Can anyone take this guy's side for a minute? Play devil's advocate, and tell me what basis there is for his comment? Apart from Jamie & Mozilla, I haven't seen a lot of high-profile dropouts. ESR and tons -- tons -- of other leaders/developers appear to be moving forward en masse and full steam ahead. There's Miguel, Alan & the new 2.4 maintainer (remember when the only kernel guy was Linus? Nowadays it seems like Linus could be hit by a train and Linux would survive.), Bruce (at HP now, right?), even Rob, etc.

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