Wednesday, October 15, 2003I just had an epiphany I want some feedback on:
Is the Open Source/Free Software model of development ideally suited for techie projects only? In other words, does the open source collaborative model only work well on projects that are inherently complex and firmly rooted in the technology mindspace? Does it fall apart when considering projects designed for non-professional, non-technical, end users? The successful projects to date have been, "by geeks, for geeks." All the other ones seem to have failed miserably. Linux, Sendmail, Apache, BIND, TCP/IP, JUnit, emacs, vi have all been targeted at programmers/developers.
True, successful projects may have positive repercussions for everyday people (where would Amazon be without Apache, Perl, PHP, etc.) but they have nowhere near the acceptance of MS-Office, Windows, Adobe Photoshop, or Quark Xpress to name a few closed source successes. As a matter of fact, every example of open source competition against closed source targeted at laymen that I can think of seems to have failed when you consider raw user-numbers. Windows desktop beats GNOME/KDE, Photoshop beats GIMP, AIM/Yahoo! IM beats Jabber, MS-Office beats StarOffice. Is raw user numbers an incorrect metric to use? I don't think so but I'm willing to debate its merits.
Is this a real dividing line or is there something I'm missing? If it is a true phenomenon is there some way around this or are open source successes forever doomed to be "back room, server-oriented phenomenon"?
5:01:50 PM #
Is the Open Source/Free Software model of development ideally suited for techie projects only? In other words, does the open source collaborative model only work well on projects that are inherently complex and firmly rooted in the technology mindspace? Does it fall apart when considering projects designed for non-professional, non-technical, end users? The successful projects to date have been, "by geeks, for geeks." All the other ones seem to have failed miserably. Linux, Sendmail, Apache, BIND, TCP/IP, JUnit, emacs, vi have all been targeted at programmers/developers.
True, successful projects may have positive repercussions for everyday people (where would Amazon be without Apache, Perl, PHP, etc.) but they have nowhere near the acceptance of MS-Office, Windows, Adobe Photoshop, or Quark Xpress to name a few closed source successes. As a matter of fact, every example of open source competition against closed source targeted at laymen that I can think of seems to have failed when you consider raw user-numbers. Windows desktop beats GNOME/KDE, Photoshop beats GIMP, AIM/Yahoo! IM beats Jabber, MS-Office beats StarOffice. Is raw user numbers an incorrect metric to use? I don't think so but I'm willing to debate its merits.
Is this a real dividing line or is there something I'm missing? If it is a true phenomenon is there some way around this or are open source successes forever doomed to be "back room, server-oriented phenomenon"?
5:01:50 PM #
Caption from a website hosted in China that I visit occasionally:
10:55:35 AM #
"Becase of the problem of our server,some times
you may not visit our site, it will be refixed before next Thursady."
10:55:35 AM #
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