Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: Open Source -- revengeware
Author: Todd Blanchard Posted: 7/21/2000; 10:15:13 PM Topic: Open Source -- a world onto itself Msg #: 18913 (In response to 18800) Prev/Next: 18912 / 18914
Now what really spells doom for the Open Source guys is that they don't have very many users. So, can any new ideas permeate? How?Doom? I don't think any of them are going anywhere.
I think you're not thinking correctly about why OpenSource exists. Nearly every opensource project has been kicked off by some piseed off developer who got screwed by some company whose product he was using and now he's determined never to let that happen again. I know you can relate to that.
How's he gonna do this? By independently writing a replacement for that product from that company that screwed him. Plus he's gonna give it away to screw those so and so's who screwed him. Its both revenge and self-defense. So naturally its not new and innovative on its own. And the OpenSource guy doesn't maybe have a lot of users directly using his OpenSource product. He doesn't care about that either. He's building this thing for himself to use. The OpenSource project isn't an end, its a means. Nearly all OpenSource projects are plumbing, infrastructure. Not apps.
The apache guys don't write apache because they want to write a great web server, they do it so they can then build great websites. The gnome guys don't wanna write widgets, they wanna write apps using the widgets. They Mozilla guys don't wanna write a web browser, they wanna provide web browsing components for building other things, the browser is a test app for demonstration purposes. The Squeak project is an opensource Smalltalk so the researchers don't have to put up with the wacky management of ParcPlace and its not there to be a Smalltalk, its there to provide the substrate for lots of research projects like Morphic. The whole gnustep group is there because they got Steved by Next and they just wanna keep writing cool apps using cool APIs.
They don't care about dreams or innovation or changing the world. They just wanna have decent tools that they can rely on without worrying about some PHB killing support and leaving them high and dry next month because the company just decided that colored plastic wrapped hardware is where the real money is. They wanna get something DONE thats gonna last a little while. Don't look to the OpenSource community for heavy innovation - there's some there for sure - but more often an OpenSource project is just there to route around some squirrely software execs. Can you blame them?
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