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An anonymous coward writes:
"An interesting article about the shift in open source from idealistic to pragmatic. The author compares the relative obscurity of FOSS software such as MediaGoblin and KDE's MakePlayLive co-op to commercial software. The article then goes on to discuss the split between FOSS's goal to provide freedom to users and to provide high-quality software. Also mentioned is the split between commercial and non-commercial FOSS."
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What Happened to the Vision in Open Source?
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Drew617 on Sunday March 23 2014, @05:00PM
"FOSS" is pretty goddamn broad. We get two examples of FOSS projects with "vision." Mark Shuttleworth and/or Ubuntu is apparently an example of a project without it, although one is just a guy and the other can hardly be considered a single FOSS project.
For all the anticipation of the Year of Linux on the Desktop, did anyone expect we'd get there without making some pragmatic choices?
A couple examples: Steam vs. centralized media; Ubuntu's domination vs. "making free-licensed hardware an option found in every computer store." It's incorrect to frame these as binary choices.
It's a bad thing for Steam (and therefore Linux) to gain traction? Ubuntu shouldn't be trying to solidify or grow its user base? I think we're as close as we've been to Year of Linux and that has a lot to do with Shuttleworth and Ubuntu. Folks have rightly disagreed with some of their decisions, but they've delivered a high quality, high utility general purpose desktop OS, a nearly standard toolset for many people.
If every idealistic dev and engineer had their way, we'd have thousands of devs and engineers bitching about the relative merits of init daemons and the like, and its resultant fragmentation. It's been bad enough for long enough already.
The author's point about open hardware is well taken, but again I doubt it's a binary choice - the Deb/Ubuntu guys are not likely the same people who'd produce it, and nobody's going to produce it without a real market demand. Something needs to run on that hardware, anyway - Ubuntu's resources are probably well-allocated as is.
Besides, what better way to raise market demand/awareness among normal users than a compelling free OS that's locked out of the latest disposable shitboxes and tablets at Walmart?
(Score: 1) by jon3k on Sunday March 23 2014, @05:10PM
If every idealistic dev and engineer had their way, we'd have thousands of devs and engineers bitching about the relative merits of init daemons and the like, and its resultant fragmentation
Uh, bad news, we do have that. init vs upstart vs systemd.
(Score: 1) by Drew617 on Sunday March 23 2014, @05:15PM
Yes, a poor example. I think it was stuck in my head for that reason.
What I meant to communicate was more like spawning a hundred differentiated projects based the idealistic arguments that were made.
Instead, despite the noise, Ubuntu did the dreaded pragmatic thing.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 23 2014, @05:55PM
The wholesale "going corporate" or "selling out" is a sign that, yes, open source does work. Remember when the idea of a free office program which could manipulate Microsoft formats was radical? Or a Linux that worked out of the box, including playing any media and wireless? Growing up and going corporate will always happen, and when it does the more ideologically inclined will move on to other things or bail and create an alternative which better suits their needs -- and who knows that better than us?
It's the same problem that I believe is beginning to happen to music -- There's no more low-hanging fruit when it comes to being innovative. All the exciting stuff to be done has already been done, and what's left is mostly pure drudgery. Media players and messengers have now been done many times over. There's a window manager to suit every need and preference, all the new and exciting stuff being done with window managers is again all under-the-hood drudgery, at least until somebody develops a credible and revolutionary 3-D window manager/interface that doesn't look like it's stuck in the late '80's running on an SGI Octane.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday March 24 2014, @10:18AM
Uh, bad news, we do have that. init vs upstart vs systemd.
No, we don't. We have systemd and that's it, mostly.
In case you haven't noticed, Debian just went through a bunch of drama where they decided to switch to systemd. After that, Canonical conceded, and decided also to switch to systemd in the future, abandoning upstart. The other major distros are already using systemd, or in the process of switching to it. Everyone has now abandoned upstart altogether, and is either currently using, or in the process of adopting systemd, with the exception of some small distros like perhaps Slackware, or Gentoo (which I believe is allowing multiple options).
The OP's point stands and is correct: we're converging on systemd because of pragmatism and because every single idealistic dev doesn't get his way, and projects are governed usually by consensus.