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

Re: Open Source -- a world onto itself

Author:Paul Snively
Posted:7/21/2000; 11:23:20 AM
Topic:Open Source -- a world onto itself
Msg #:18887 (In response to 18881)
Prev/Next:18886 / 18888

calvin@xmission.com: I don't think OSS exists, or its' existence depends upon a user base outside the developers and hackers that use the software. "The One True OSS Motivation" is scratch your own itch.

Scratching your own itch means you solve your own problem, you figure out your own solution. That makes you a developer, not a user, not "Mom". OSS will continue to exist perfectly well with no Mom's.

I think we're in vehement agreement; in the message that you quote me from, one of the points I make to Dave is that OSS, in fact, has millions and millions of users by virtue of running on a lot of servers, or even BEING a lot of servers (Linux + Apache is the most obvious example of this). But you're also correct; Linux and Apache weren't written with the intent of being provided (whether given or sold) to millions and millions of users; they were written because a) Linus was a CS student who wanted a reasonable UNIX-like OS on his cheap Intel box, and b) some folks thought Apache's predecessor was an OK web server, but they had some ideas as to how to improve it, which they initially distributed as patches (hence "a patchy server" = "apache server.")

I interpreted Dave's assertion to be that OSS is essentially dead without normal, average, casual, non-geek users. I happen to agree with that assertion. Where we differ, if we differ at all, is in our conceptions as to where those users come from. The traditional shrink-wrap software conception is that you design software for these users and sell it to them. In a client-server world, you can put up one (admittedly very successful) server and have millions of users. Write either kind of software, "shrink-wrap" desktop or server, and fail to sell scads of copies (of the shrink-wrap stuff) or draw lots of users (in the server case) and you'll likely not be able to afford either type of distribution cost (packaging, marketing, etc. for the shrink-wrap; hosting, sysadmin, etc. for the server).

Bottom line, I see the two approaches as being a lot more analogous than dissimilar, and what dissimilarities there are don't seem very compelling. But unfortunately, a lot of the desktop software people and a lot of the client/server or P2P people end up talking around each other, and right now, the non-OSS world and the OSS world tend to get divided along shrink-wrap and client/server lines.

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