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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."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday March 23 2014, @10:33PM

    by c0lo (156) on Sunday March 23 2014, @10:33PM (#20051)

    It's just not so hot at inventing new ... for lack of a better term... products.

    You may be right... but only if you impose a restriction on where to look for the innovation in Open Source.

    If not accepting the restriction (and many, myself included, will find such a restriction as arbitrary and not relevant for assessing the usefulness and social impact) one can find heap of innovation. Examples:

    1. multipath TCP [wikipedia.org] - protocol - first release (together with the IETF spec [ietf.org]) as open source as a Linux driver in Jan 2013 [github.com], adopted in commercial env by Apple in Sep 2013 [uclouvain.be] (used for/by Siri)
    2. Bitttorent [wikipedia.org] - protocol and fist implementation in 2001 by Bram Cohen [wikipedia.org] - in 2009 amounts for 43% to 70% of Internet traffic (do I need to mention how many commercial entities [dailyapps.net] are using it?)
    3. Bitcoin - should I exemplify the social impact of it?
    4. the majority of NoSQL databases [wikipedia.org] were released and are available under Open Source licenses. Their social impact is quite high, even if they are not running as "products" on the end users machines
    5. [etc... one only need to refuse the horse blinders to find many examples]
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 24 2014, @01:58AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 24 2014, @01:58AM (#20100)
    All of that is very pale in comparison to what happens in the commercial world. Money is a great motivator.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 24 2014, @02:19AM

      by c0lo (156) on Monday March 24 2014, @02:19AM (#20110)
      Do you often assess the success by the money rewards? Perchance, you always do so?
      If positive to the above, don't you ever wonder if there's nothing better as a measure of life fulfillment?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 24 2014, @09:07PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 24 2014, @09:07PM (#20664)

        > Do you often assess the success by the money rewards?

        No, and I did not here, either. Nice attempt at a dodge, though.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 24 2014, @11:58PM

          by c0lo (156) on Monday March 24 2014, @11:58PM (#20764)

          No, and I did not here, either.

          Good to hear.

          Nice attempt at a dodge, though.

          I didn't dodge (at least, wasn't not my intention).
          Just wanted to suggest (coming from the "personal angle") that: while money can be a powerful motivation, it is not the only one - and sometimes not even the most powerful.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 25 2014, @01:25PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 25 2014, @01:25PM (#21076)
            Not sure what that has to do with the comment I did make.