Survey On the Future of Open Source, and Lessons From the Past 97
An anonymous reader writes "Andy Oram reports on the quality, security, and community driving open source adoption. 'All too often, the main force uniting competitors is the fear of another vendor and the realization that they can never beat a dominant vendor on its own turf. Open source becomes a way of changing the rules out from under the dominant player. OpenStack, for instance, took on VMware in the virtualization space and Amazon.com in the IaaS space. Android attracted phone manufacturers and telephone companies as a reaction to the iPhone.'"
Linux Desktop (Score:0, Informative)
Every time I say I'm switching from windows to Linux, I go crawling back and why... Linux desktop. My latest attempt with Ubuntu - ended up in a dog slow computer with a gui that hangs. The Suse attempt with KDE has really fuzzy fonts - I've played with the anti-aliasing but it still sucks to look at it. At least Ubuntu you could consider reading on it. I know try Mint... Really my favorite Linux at the moment is android.
I'm at the point of considering a Mac, but those stores with the blue army kind of scare me. :>
Re:Consistency (Score:2, Informative)
All that proves is that Free Software is more transparent.
Fucking this. Right here.
I'd argue there are orders of magnitude more half-finished projects than fully developed ones in closed source environments, it's just no one sees them. At least I know I have about a dozen to one ratio of crap projects versus stable, releasable projects in my own folders at work. And I'm not a full-time programmer. I certainly know that the releasable, stable projects started out as half-finished crap.
The open source community might do well to have a major hub adopt an easy to use TRL standard for devs to mark their projects with. Perhaps reviewers could even agree/disagree with the developer's marked rating. Perhaps certain trustworthy users could even function as a third score (Dev TRL, Registered Users TRL, Critics TRL) or something.
Re:Competitive advantage (Score:5, Informative)
You entirely missed the crux of the summary. Each company knew they could not, individually, supersede the established competitive advantage of the most successful player in their industry. However, bandied together in cooperation, they COULD forge a competitive advantage and undermine the player's supremacy. Better to collaborate on an alternative than concede and pay out millions to the player.
It's like Zulu uniting tribes against The British Empire. Or Attila the Hun uniting tribes against Rome. Or Genghis Khan against China.
If your business model needs you to the be the sole owner of a competitive advantage, and you are never able to achieve that advantage alone, then you have no business model.
Re:The reason I don't use open source GPL (Score:2, Informative)
What you're want is not the goal of a license -- what you're wanting is the goal of a written (or in some states/countries, verbal) contract/negotiation. Understand the difference between what a usage license is for and what a financial contract/negotiation is for. Understand they serve separate purposes.
My advice to you would be for the "someone" to use the 2-clause BSD license for the licensing, and a written/signed agreement between you and said "someone" that discusses financial reimbursement (percentages, rates, baseline payments or maximum payouts, etc.). The latter doesn't have to be complex, it can be as simple as you want it to be (literally hand-written on a piece of paper if you want), though I would strongly suggest having a lawyer review it for any "catches" that could screw you financially in the end (e.g. someone 5 years later smiles and says "you said 15%, but didn't say of what, so I want 15% of all your company's assets"). Otherwise if you don't like the 2-clause BSD license, consider the WTFPL (yes I'm serious).
Both the 2-clause BSD license and WTFPL are easy to understand, and provide actual freedom of choice/action; while Richard Stallman's desires might be founded on good intentions, it may or may not apply to every situation. The GPL is a very "idealism-focused" license (in the sense that it's hoping to change the world through a borderline viral belief system), while things like the 2-clause BSD license and WTFPL are more pragmatic.
You would be surprised how many software authors choose the GPL simply because "they heard of it somewhere", and likewise how many software authors do not understand in full what the GPL says or mandates/requires. It's quite shocking, honestly. I would say "Don't people read the license they choose?!" except the licenses are written by pretentious pricks and are very hard to understand, especially for non-English speakers (I had to deal with this last month, where a Brazillian colleague was considering the GPL but didn't understand it given how its worded). The 2-clause BSD license and WTFPL are pretty black-and-white -- once again, KISS principle wins.
Re:The reason I don't use open source GPL (Score:4, Informative)
The GPL is hard to understand, because it is quite long. This is because it is written to have legal meaning. It's the legal system(s) that is at fault here, I think.