The Future of Open Source is Still Very Much in Flux (technologyreview.com) 49
Free and open software have transformed the tech industry. But we still have a lot to work out to make them healthy, equitable enterprises. From a report: When Xerox donated a new laser printer to MIT in 1980, the company couldn't have known that the machine would ignite a revolution. While the early decades of software development generally ran on a culture of open access, this new printer ran on inaccessible proprietary software, much to the horror of Richard M. Stallman, then a 27-year-old programmer at the university.
A few years later, Stallman released GNU, an operating system designed to be a free alternative to one of the dominant operating systems at the time: Unix. The free-software movement was born, with a simple premise: for the good of the world, all code should be open, without restriction or commercial intervention. Forty years later, tech companies are making billions on proprietary software, and much of the technology around us is inscrutable. But while Stallman's movement may look like a failed experiment, the free and open-source software movement is not only alive and well; it has become a keystone of the tech industry.
A few years later, Stallman released GNU, an operating system designed to be a free alternative to one of the dominant operating systems at the time: Unix. The free-software movement was born, with a simple premise: for the good of the world, all code should be open, without restriction or commercial intervention. Forty years later, tech companies are making billions on proprietary software, and much of the technology around us is inscrutable. But while Stallman's movement may look like a failed experiment, the free and open-source software movement is not only alive and well; it has become a keystone of the tech industry.
Re:Lovefest (Score:4, Informative)
I think by "support pedofilia" you mean 'had reasonable doubts about a friend having received due process', you're still a troll but that would be a more accurate description.
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And slander? His support is well-documented
And yet you refuse to cite any of it, and instead trot out a paragraph-long ad hominem to support your opinion
What operating system did Stalleman release? (Score:2, Insightful)
This not to take away the good that Stalleman did but can we stick to reality.
Open source is not is flux. People trying to lock down others is.
Re:What operating system did Stalleman release? (Score:4, Insightful)
meaningless distinction for anyone not a computer scientist and even then, maybe less than half.
the kernel without its interface to most people is worthless. a kernel is a kernel. an interface is an interface. both of them are an OS
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"the kernel without its interface to most people is worthless"
It's useful to people who need an operating system in a system with or without user interaction. Including embedded developers. Mostly it is useful for labeling and identifying distinct pieces of the system.
But you are right for most people the distinction between their pc tower and hard drive or cpu is also worthless... at this point that is even true for half the 'computer scientists' out there. It's kind of a pointless debate to have with me t
Linux is one piece (Score:2)
It's useful to people who need an operating system in a system with or without user interaction. Including embedded developers.
I've gathered from the GNU coding standards that GNU is meant for desktops and servers as opposed to smaller embedded devices. Those tend to use a different userland atop Linux, usually with musl, Newlib, or Bionic for POSIX.1 and BusyBox or Toybox for POSIX.2 instead of glibc and Bash+Coreutils respectively. The modularity to run as part of a GNU system or as part of Android or Alpine is one of the strengths of Linux.
Mostly it is useful for labeling and identifying distinct pieces of the system.
For example, Linux is one piece of a GNU/Linux system. Another GNU program called GRUB loa
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"The modularity to run as part of a GNU system"
Yes, the ability to provide a platform for various gnu utils or various alternatives or any blend a user should choose is a strength of an operating system like linux.
"GNU/Linux system"
There is no such thing as a GNU/Linux system but there are many Linux systems which bundle some of the GNU utils. You can also run a number of utils and apps from windows on a linux system. But linux is not part of the GNU system. GNU was built to run atop and alongside another m
Re:What operating system did Stalleman release? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:What operating system did Stalleman release? (Score:5, Funny)
What operating system did Stalleman release?
Emacs
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evil (extensible vi layer) for Emacs (Score:2)
If you're a fan of vi, have you tried adding evil: Extensible Visual Interface Layer [github.com] to Emacs?
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I prefer lemon juice (Score:2)
To get away from being forever in bed with Big Flux, I opt for lemon juice. It's... ...never mind. Too much research needed for a pretty stupid joke...
What's with the constant attacks on Open Source? (Score:2, Insightful)
Operating System? (Score:1)
>A few years later, Stallman released GNU, an operating system
Oh, i didn't realise Hurd was released in the 1980's. How's it going?
GNU usually runs on Linux now (Score:3)
Hurd [...] How's it going?
To put it nicely: Hurd is a research kernel, and not all research pans out.
The GNU system is a userspace environment atop Linux, Darwin, NT, or the kernel of FreeBSD. During its development, it was also deployed atop the kernels of proprietary UNIX systems and atop Hurd. Over the 1990s, while AT&T was clinging to its claims over *BSD, Linux quickly became the usual kernel for a production GNU system. As of the 2020s, GNU/Linux is by far the most popular operating system on Internet servers and quite pop
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GNU/Linux is by far the most popular operating system on Internet servers and quite popular on software developers' workstations as well
If we're looking at the utilities that control user space, at this point, it would be more accurate to call it systemd/Linux.
Go Away, Rebecca. (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't walk into a room of successful people - among the most successful and impactful of all time - and tell them how they're doing it wrong.
Imagine complaining to Henry Ford, Pablo Picasso, and Jim Henson that they need fixing because some low-H college professor somewhere said so.
This desire to whip weird folks into normalcy is perhaps the most destructive force a society can experience.
Try doing some heavy lifting before you deign to criticize.
bureaucracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Many big open source projects are surrounded by a bureaucracy. In many cases, people working in these bureaucracies are making a lot of money. People doing the real work, from from it. It kind of mirrors what is happening in Commercial Businesses with Upper Management vs the Worker.
At one time, people would develop something to "scratch an itch" and release it. Why would someone working on signifiant projects for free now, enriching these bureaucracies. So now, many people working in these large projects are doing it for a salary, dealing with a bureaucracy, not to "scratch an itch". So here we are.
Re: bureaucracy (Score:4, Insightful)
capitalism... (Score:1)
Open-source is fine (Score:5, Insightful)
The future of Free Software is absolutely fine; it's not going anywhere.
The fact that it's very hard for corporations to make large profits from Free Software is not relevant to Free Software's future because there will always be non-profits and hobbyists who carry Free Software forward.
Capitalism, at least to some extent, is well and good, but it does tend to induce a reality-distortion in which everything is measured in terms of money.
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The future of Free Software is absolutely fine; it's not going anywhere.
The fact that it's very hard for corporations to make large profits from Free Software is not relevant to Free Software's future because there will always be non-profits and hobbyists who carry Free Software forward.
Capitalism, at least to some extent, is well and good, but it does tend to induce a reality-distortion in which everything is measured in terms of money.
The hobbyist has always been a endangered species in the software world. Even in the early pc days programmers with the majority of influence and fame have been hobbyists "while working for Xerox" or hobbyists "while working for IBM" or some other major software developer.....
Re:Open-source is fine (Score:5, Informative)
There are tons and tons of open-source projects that don't have a corporation behind them. I don't think we're in any danger of running out of people willing to do this.
Examples: PostgreSQL, Gnome, KDE, kdenlive, Inkscape, Gimp, rsync, Perl, Python, XFCE, ...
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The hobbyist has always been a endangered species in the software world. Even in the early pc days programmers with the majority of influence and fame have been hobbyists "while working for Xerox" or hobbyists "while working for IBM" or some other major software developer.....
I do not think they are. Sure, people doing this for fun will not produce the mountain of bad commercial software produced, but everything needed is there. The difference is that commercial crap gets produced because somebody wants to make money. FOSS gets produced because somebody sees a need for it being produced and the existence of that need is far less often the case. The big advantage of FOSS is that it only gets changed if there is a technological or user-driven need to a change, not because somebody
Re:Open-source is fine (Score:4, Interesting)
That nicely sums it up. The fact of the matter is that FOSS transcends the idea if an economic system. In a sense the idea of an economic system is far less refined and (in the case of capitalism) outright primitive in comparison to the FOSS approach. Not arguing that there are better systems than capitalism, but you do not even need an ecconomic system at all and the FOSS idea would still work. What you do need is the need for people that see value in collaborating with others to solve complex problems and that want to solve problems just because that solves problems.
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Closed-source is measured in money. Open-source is measured in ego.
Almost all people work towards the goal of profit, albeit under different names.
What the fuck is this? (Score:4, Insightful)
But while Stallman's movement may look like a failed experiment
According to who? Wikipedia says:
Stallman launched the GNU Project, founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in October 1985,[2] developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote all versions of the GNU General Public License.
So unless MsMash is on the "vi" camp in the vi vs. Emacs debate, nothing appears to be dead. Last I checked FSF is alive and well, and so are the GPL 2 and 3, as are Emacs and GCC.
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Saying the GPL is "alive and well" is a yuge understatement.
And there are a host of other free software licenses covering billions of lines of code that the world runs on too.
Of course there are a handful of niches still controlled by proprietary software, but it's certainly not the norm.
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Indeed. I see not failure there. Somebody is being stupid.
Re:What the fuck is this? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's seriously where you're going to truncate the quote? The rest of the LINE agrees with you:
But while Stallman's movement may look like a failed experiment, the free and open-source software movement is not only alive and well; it has become a keystone of the tech industry.
And in some ways, it MAY look like a failed experiment. More and more software infringes on our rights every day. Those articles pop up constantly here. Surveillance software, trackers in everything, the enshittification of the web. This is the most disingenuous quoting of a summary I've seen in a long time.
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The rights that software allegedly infringes upon have nothing to do with the rights of the source code of that software itself. It's perfectly possible to write open-source software that surveils, tracks, and enshittifies the web. (Whether any such software actually exists is irrelevant.)
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More and more software infringes on our rights every day. Those articles pop up constantly here. Surveillance software, trackers in everything, the enshittification of the web.
So? Are they closed-sourced software? If so, what's new and what does that have to do with OSS? Are they open-sourced software? Don't like it? Fork it!
The movement is not dead, it needs finances (Score:2)
It's just in adolescence. Big companies are starting to get interested. Linux has many corporate backers, as has the FSF, and many, many other projects.
Unfortunately, the less glorious projects to support haven't got that many (or none at all) backers. Corporations want to be seen. They choose their philanthropy carefully.
I wouldn't be amazed if wanting to be seen was one of the non-public reasons why Microsoft bought github; "look, we provide a place for all these open source community projects! We're all
Why would it ever stop being "in flux"? (Score:2)
I mean, 100 years ago licensing of any kind wasn't even a thing, at least not in everyday life. 100 years before that, copyright wasn't a thing. Why would we think these kinds of changes would ever stop?
What the hell is an "equitable enterprise"? (Score:2)
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Which of those words could you not find in a dictionary?
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Lotta people didn't read the article (Score:2)
I mean, as usual. And the headline is bad. Also as usual. And frankly, the summary is terrible.
Look, "in flux" really just means "still changing" in this context. There's a lot of stuff that's still changing in the FOSS world, and the article read as a whole doesn't presage its doom, it merely tries to grapple with the realities. How do people make this into full time work? Only a few people get paid, but sometimes they're making software that becomes really important. FOSS, like most software, has a divers