Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

Dev.SN ♥ developers

What Happened to the Vision in Open Source?

posted by LaminatorX on Sunday March 23 2014, @03:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the Bizarre-Cathedrals dept.

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."

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
What Happened to the Vision in Open Source? | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 1000 moderator points   | 55 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 23 2014, @05:55PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday March 23 2014, @05:55PM (#19998) Journal

    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.