As opposed to what? [LWN.net]

As opposed to what?

Posted Oct 23, 2004 3:03 UTC (Sat) by dkite (guest, #4577)
Parent article: Why open source is unsustainable (Financial Times)

Churchill said Democracy is the worst form of government except for all
those others that have been tried.

Open source is the worst form of software development and distribution,
except for all the others.

Look what happened before free software became as broad and useful as it
is now. There was one source for software solutions. No competition. Any
good idea was eaten up by the monoliths. Unix was disappearing, Windows
was gradually encroaching on all market segments. Remember the 'I love
you' trojan? At the time what else could a person use? If
something like that happened next week, the Evolution and Kmail servers
would have to be replaced due to overuse.

All of a sudden there are alternatives popping up. Google could fool
around with thousands of boxes for no more than the cost of commodity
hardware and their time. All of a sudden there are new and interesting
developments showing up.

We would have waited till Windows 2016 for any security enhancements.
Microsoft is actually responding to customers!

Yes it would be nice if all the free software developers could make
windfalls from their work. But to say that the system is flawed is to
ignore the enormous improvements that have come about in the marketplace
due to free software.

Derek

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As opposed to what?

Posted Oct 24, 2004 18:19 UTC (Sun) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

" Yes it would be nice if all the free software developers could make
windfalls from their work. But to say that the system is flawed is to
ignore the enormous improvements that have come about in the marketplace
due to free software. "

I belive that resumes the base line of all the question.

" Marketplace " !... isn't the marketplace that is distorted ?... and what can do software developers, any software developers to any system, so that they can get more 'retribution' from their work ?...

I belive this is not a 'political'(not entirely) or 'communal' or 'community' problem, but a 'Society' problem, and have its roots in education.

I dont hate Microsoft, and i can easly state that they surely have very good engineers and have done good stuff,..., but they have also destroyed the value of software by emptying its importance and the importance of any developer, in a overall marketing Strategy, that in a last analisys, had the propose of transfering all that value, to an 'Ultimate' brand name (Microsoft) and to an 'Ultimate' developer/leader(the reachest man in the world)... that has glued like cement to concrete, in the minds of the generaly very low tech aware masses of potencial 'would be' computer users.

The 'Consumption Society' that he live in just loves it, thought we are in presence perhaps of the biggest mass mind controlling, trough commercial propaganda, since the advancement of the mass press printing by the chinese.

People are/were educated to belive and to respond positively to such icons
of propaganda of Ultimate importance. More even so in computer science, that is so new yet, and where the effort to be pro-active is much more higher than in other fields.

So only massive doses of information, and a massive effort of education and user friendliness, that could transfer some importance of the Status Quo Ultimate Icons into a more distributed form of software projects/developers, can make software developers 'profit' and get more 'retribution' from their work.

*Open Source*(generaly speacking) model could very well be the right model, since it is in synchrony with the real Information Society that will be centered arround the 3th (agriculture, industrial, services) economical ring, that are *services*.

As opposed to what?

Posted Oct 26, 2004 14:35 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

what can do software developers, any software developers to any system, so that they can get more 'retribution' from their work ?...

I have no point to make. I just had to repeat this lovely malapropism (well, it's a malapropism unless you write the embedded software in military weapons).

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get some retribution. ;}

As opposed to what?

Posted Oct 26, 2004 19:11 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

'I'm off to get some retribution. ;} '

By that, i can easly suppose that you are getting off to get some money for your work,..., or some praise words from a satisfied costumer ?

Where is the offending : 'grotesque misuse of a word; a word so used' ?

As opposed to what?

Posted Oct 29, 2004 0:59 UTC (Fri) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

'retribution' and 'remuneration' are very different things.