What's Wrong with the Open Source Community?

An anonymous reader writes "We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us says a Pogo-quoting James Turner, in trying to pinpoint "What's Wrong with the Open Source Community?" for LinuxWorld this morning. But he doesn't *just* say that it's we developers ourselves, he also has five hard-to-deny reasons, including 'Open source developers often scratch the same itch' and 'Open Source developers love a good feud.' He also suggests we often approach the whole issue of encouraging migration to Linux from Windows entirely wrongly." There's also a decent rebuttal with this story as well - worth reading.

Re:blah blah

[JofCoRe]

is that if you go into an IRC channel for any non main-stream OS (os/2, linux, mac, etc) and ask a question, you're going to get beaten up by assholes

Uhhh.... I think that's just IRC, dude. :)

DVD's?

[IshanCaspian]

The author should stop griping about the difficulties of playing DVD's, because the MPAA has not allowed linux users a free, legal way to play dvd's. DeCSS, which is what most dvd-playing software is based upon, is illegal in the US. The author loses a lot of credibility by not having his facts straight....he looks like a damn n00b.

Don't forget to read the rebuttal...

[XaXXon]

It's a point/counter-point, so don't forget to read the rebuttal linked at the bottom of the page..

(also linked here [linuxworld.com])

here as well

[tepples]

Slashdot also accepts advertisements from publishers of proprietary operating systems. Your point?

Re:blah blah

[damiam]

The current topic on #debian begins with

Compromised machine info: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2003 /debian-devel-announce-200311/msg00012.html || Down: gluck (people, packages.d.o); || more info at http://www.wiggy.net/debian/

While lists.debian.org is down, a little bit of digging would have given you the Google cache [216.239.37.104]. Also, it says right there that packages.debian.org is down. How much clearer can it get? I agree, it'd be better if someone had explained the situation instead of flaming, but the information was right there.

I'm getting paid

[Per Abrahamsen]

I write free software for a living, and I'm getting paid. I'm writing an application for a vertical market (i.e. a market with very few customers). They pay me to provide the functionality they need, and they don't care about the license.

In the other end, the horizontal market, people are getting paid as well. The Linux kernel, Mozilla, and Open Office are primarily developed by people getting paid to do so.

And in-between these two extremes, people are getting paid as well. Samba, Apache, GCC, GDB and other popular network and development applications are primarily being developed by people getting paid to do so.

It is true that most free software applications, if you count them on sourceforge, are developed by amateurs in their spare time. But most of these applications have very few users as well.

Most of the free software most people use are developed by people getting paid to do so.

Re:Much to learn.

[Greger47]

What's often forgotten is that the Kuomintang party (of which Chiang Kai-Shek was leader 1925-1975) was actually founded on democratic principles and the party was elected to power in China.

Elections were also held while Kuomintang was in power on the mainland.

It wasn't untill civil war started and they got chucked out by the communists that things degraded to a good old 1 party dictatorship on Taiwan.

(I'm ofcourse painting things a bit rosy but the democracy in China was above average measured by the political standards of 1910-1920.)

Re:Beaten up by Windows assholes: non sequitur

[maximilln]

Of course you're not going to Freenode for WinXP advice. WinXP isn't in the open source community. We know exactly where the WinXP developers are. They're locked inside of Bill Gates' monolith and no, they will never be seen outside.

On the other hand, if one goes to www.debian.org and reads through the support pages, #debian on the Freenode IRC network is listed as a valid contact point.

Accusing someone with a legitimate point of being a troll is a _VERY_ bad thing to do.

Re:blah blah

[ZeroZen]

Clearly you went into #linux and asked a question! That's your first problem. You're in the wrong channel completely!

#LinuxHelp is clearly for people who need help using linux. And just because you need help doesn't mean anyone HAS to give you an answer.

I used to hang out there alot, and even then you run into problems. People who don't get an answer right away or don't get a complete one get very upset. Sometimes someone tries to help you but they don't know how and they get shafted by the person who's upset.

Upset in #Linuxhelp? Lurk for 30mins and ask again. But don't sit at your machine and get steamed up, get up and make a sandwich, smoke a doobie, whatever, because windows has probably made you quite used to having it work right away. Any arguing you do will build a huge wall and people will go out of their way to tell you to go away.

RTFM. First. Always. The people who regular a help channel will remember you if you ask alot of questions, and if they're good questions they're likely to help you again.

If you're reeeeally new at linux, and need someone on the phone with you all the time i suggest you talk to redhat or one of those companies that make their money off tech support. You WILL get an answer and not an answer you will have to work on to complete.

Even better, because i know that reponse can be inflaming, get an offline book so you can follow it step by step. Anything that starts out telling you how to install your OS in GREAT DETAIL is good, because not only does going thought every step of the slackware installation teach you alot of things you might not known about computers before (partition? MBR? WTF?!) you will pick up on and things will be easier on you not just for linux, but for everything else you do with computers.

So it is true, you get what you pay for. You can also get stuff for free, but don't expect service with a smile if you don't smile back!!! And arguing doesn't only hurt you (people won't talk to you) but you won't be able to participate with the other kids who play nice. Open source counts on you!

You are correct, but check his history.

[khasim]

His current article is a follow-up to a previous article about Linux NOT being ready for the desktop because it didn't work with his 802.11g card and wouldn't play DVD's "out of the box".

http://www.linuxworld.com/story/38038.htm

In that article, his solution was to award "kudos" (as you noted) for fixing the "problems" he claimed that rendered Linux "dead" on the desktop.

I believe that the real solution is to only purchase products from vendors that support Linux.

As for developers focusing on other aspects, that would be nice. But I'm not about to ask someone who is giving me their labour for free to work harder for my benefit.

I will contribute financially to projects and I will purchase Linux-friendly hardware and let the vendors know that I'm using it with Linux.

There are so many ways you can contribute to projects you deem worthwhile.

#1. Help with the code.

#2. Money - always appreciated.

#3. Testing & submitting GOOD bug reports.

#4. Helping with documentation.

#5. Maintaining your own "HowTo" for your system.

etc.

#2.

Re:DVD's?

[ksw2]

It's actually based on libdvdcss, which has nothing to do with DeCSS (other than the fact it cracks CSS keys.)

Mod parent up!

[khasim]

Three entirely different worlds.

#1. Microsoft - 95%+ of the desktop so any vendor shipping a product also included Windows drivers.

#2. Apple - small marketshare so it compensates by restricting hardware selection. That way it can ensure that the drivers are available.

#3. Linux - small desktop marketshare but it doesn't attempt to limit the hardware choices. So YOU have to be carefull about what hardware you purchase. Some work flawlessly, some work okay, some suck bad, some don't work at all.

Now, the problems.

#1. Different vendors write drivers that MAY NOT WORK NICELY with other vendor's drivers. That's one of the reasons that you're told to "Remove the driver, re-install the driver, did that fix it?"

#2. Limited selection. What else can be said?

#3. Better than #1, but still problems with un-supported hardware drivers. The good news is you can easily identify and remove the evil drivers. The bad news is that those drivers might be for hardware that your really need.

comunity development/compromise OSX vs Linux

[acomj]

If you look at linux as opposed to OSX, where OSX developed a brand new somewhat consistent desktop in far less time then KDE/GNU existed, you can see some of the problems of open source (The open source model has some advantages too) One of the problems is that so many people work on it, it can be hard to get anything consistent. this

Look at configuration files for an example. A lot of programs use different formats for configurations, because the developers think there way is best and they're writing the code so its the way they want it. There is no linux boss telling people use X format for config files. This gives the linux distributions less of a conhesive feel than a OS that says "Config files will look like this.. love it of leave it"

This is why the linux distributions are so helpfull and its painfull to see them leave the desktop market(redhat/ suse etc..). They've been trying to pull everything together with setup tools and a consistent look.

Re:Much to learn.

[Saganaga]

You are confused. Kai-Shek was not a communist; he lost in a civil war TO the communists, led by Mao.

Weak article, but here are some REAL problems.

[Ogerman]

While some of his points have some validity, such as cases of improper itch scratching, he misses some much bigger issues. There will always be immature people in any community or company. And there will always be people re-inventing wheels (often just for the learning experience, mind you) The challenges we face are more related to communication and better collaboration.

1.) Standards for simple everyday stuff While diversity in implementation is good, certain things simply need to be agreed upon community-wide:

• Font handling: not only at the X server level, but for applications. There should be a single config used by all apps, whether KDE/Gnome-2/Gnome-1/Mozilla/etc.
• Drag-and-drop. Fortunately, this one is being worked on for next-gen X11 versions, such as the Xdnd extension. Once complete, everybody needs to actually use this.
• Browser bookmarks. As with fonts, there should be a single, common source used by any browsers installed. XBEL anyone?
• Basic system configuration. There's no reason why all the distros can't decide on a standard configuration system for hardware detection / modules / network settings / X11 config / etc. This would allow KDE/Gnome interfaces to be developed and used across all distros.
• Security related configuration. The reason why there are so many successful hacks of Linux machines is that it is so difficult for the average person (or even a fairly knowledgeable person) to properly lock down a machine. There needs to be a standard configuration interface for managing network services, building netfilter configs, etc. ACL-enhanced kernels and easy crypto filesystems also need to become the norm. Again, once a standard config interface is in place, standard tools can be written for Gnome and KDE and used across all distros.

2.) Enterprise database software This is the "killer-app" for nearly all businesses and should be the prime focus for those who want to see F/OSS on the corporate desktop. Trouble is, we don't have a good F/OSS enterprise-class application server! Forget cheesy PHP/MySQL apps. Forget Zope and other web application frameworks. That software has it's place, but it's not up to the task of hard-core database apps. We need something as powerful as J2EE, but without the steep learning curve, alphabet soup of acronyms, sketchy documentation, closed standards, and dependance on proprietary Sun code. Yes, I am aware of JBoss (open-source, non-official J2EE implementation), but it still has the issues listed above. Either a completely F/OSS JRE/JVM/JDK software stack needs to be written or else a completely new application server standard needs to be invented, perhaps using ObjectiveC or Python. GNU Enterprise (www.gnue.org) has a start, but that project seems to be stagnant and uninspired.

3.) More professional developers Simply put, the F/OSS of greatest quality is usually developed by people who are being paid to meet needs. There are plenty of viable business models and market opportunities. Hobby projects won't cut it. If you want F/OSS to succeed, you need to do your part in the marketplace.

Re:Piggyback

[swv3752]

Mandrake started as RH plus KDE. For the longest time, MDK and RH were binary compatible on pentium plus machines. MDK has significantly diverged from RH in the latest releases that there is less than a 50% chance of a given RPM installing cleanly. The biggest problem is they call libraries different names so a RH RPM is complaining about a missing dependacy even though the missing library is really installed.

Considering that MDK was the first LSB compliant distro, so if anyone is at fault it would be RH.