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

Re: I don't think so

Author:Geoff Allen
Posted:8/24/2000; 8:24:06 AM
Topic:Next survey: Are you an open source developer?
Msg #:20092 (In response to 20080)
Prev/Next:20091 / 20093

I think you've hit on where Open Source software really shines (and where/how it started, big surprise!). And, if I recall correctly, this has been Richard Stallman's theory on how programmers are still employed in an open source world. I'm no big fan of RMS' politics, but I think this is a plausible theory.

I think it boils down to community. Open source works with a community of users/developers. Mozilla has had a hard time building the community, because the code was so difficult to master. Perl, on the other hand, has always had a great community.

If you follow Slashdot after every Mozilla milestone release, there are a bunch of messages along the lines of "they still haven't got ____ working." The best open source projects have an attitude of "we should fix _____." And the very best, of course, is "I'm using the project and noticed _____ wasn't working properly. Here's a diff to fix it." The key is they vs. we.

I'm a system administrator. The communities I hang out in have an attitude of "Here's a script to do X," sometimes followed by someone else with "I took the liberty of modifying your script so it handles these other three situations." Same idea, but we're generally working as users of a large package (which may be commercial or open source), and developing "open source" add-ons to help administer the package.

Given that community is how open source has traditionally worked best, the relatively recent phenomenon of "commercial" open source efforts (like Eazel) is rather interesting. I'm not sure how it'll pan out. I'm skeptical, but hopeful.

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