Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Open Source Dictatorships

Author:Jeremy Bowers
Posted:8/13/1999; 10:45:36 AM
Topic:Re: Open Source Dictatorships
Msg #:9468 (In response to 9457)
Prev/Next:9466 / 9469

Oh. I see.

Well, software is as much a bazaar as its ever been... and as much a cathedral... and as much a dictatorship.

Computing has long been difficult to describe, and we've always turned to metaphors, but I think we're getting to the point where there are no metaphors anymore that make any sense. (I'm yet young; please forgive me if we've been there already for 20 years and this is not a surprise to you) Dictatorship as a metaphor is not that great for an open source project; it may superficially describe the structure, but there are other connotations that aren't great... bazaar may describe the productivity and activity level, but probably over states the chaos factor (at least in some ways)...

So you get to playing metaphors off on each other. "It's like the order of a dictatorship with willing participants with the structure of a bazaar representing how these dictatorships play off against each other, except that some projects run like democracies, and then there's the proprietary companies that have slick booths that charge you to enter, and..." By the time you work out the description to be complete, it's near nonsense to anybody who doesn't already understand. Then you get it rolling around all the various organizations, and the press gets involved, and what little sense is there ever was to the metaphors gets lost.

Just like deep linking. I hate dealing with metaphors, and really try to avoid it. URLs are not just like addresses... addresses can't contain form responses. Linking is not the equivalent of embedding the content into your page, it's something new, only parts of it are old.

Using the metaphors fools people into thinking they know what they are talking about. The ones who create the metaphors and understand what they mean, and where they can fall flat (and I'd guess every poster on the Deep Linking thread falls under that catagory), can use them fruitfully to discuss things with other people of that same understanding, but the rest of the "public" gets lost without even knowing it. I've seen this in so many of the current debates that it's getting ridiculous.

The hype and the press enter into this by trying to simplify the metaphors even further, into hype, so, to address your own example, Closed Source becomes equal to Greedy, Inefficient, Low Quality, Anti-Community, etc. etc. among those who don't understand things well enough to draw the distinctions, which is usually the bulk of any movement. The leaders tend to understand, but the press doesn't, and (with the possible exception of Open Source) who reads the leaders directly when they can just read the press? (Or the new leaders that more accurately reflect the opinions of the majority?)

I guess what I'm claiming is that it isn't all just hype, but that the hype can overshadow the truth in too many people's mind (and when that includes the reporter, that's bad news). And that metaphors are costing us, as an Internet community, more then they are gaining us (but what alternatives do we have?).

I have issues with the hypesters too, but they aren't going to learn enough to avoid hype, so they're just going to spew metaphors mistaking them for the real thing. Whatcha gonna do, beyond being annoyed? If I knew, I'd probably be a millionaire.

I guess you probably weren't exactly looking for an analysis of the hype either, but hey, let's just all randomly muse together, eh? Can be surprisingly productive. Please, if anyone has an opinion on what I've said, let me know, I've been thinking on these lines a lot lately and I'd appreciate any input you may have. (These lines of thought came from the question "How do you communicate Internet issues to non-Internet people, especially when every known metaphor only leads to errors?")

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