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I think martinfick offered great metaphor...I think martinfick offered great metaphor...Posted Jan 19, 2012 10:29 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: generic vs closed platforms by jschrod Parent article: LCA: Addressing the failure of open source
It's not quite clear to me if and how that argument can be migrated to situation of private software use, but it might be a pointer towards a possible direction. I think martinfick offered great metaphor: when you use proprietary software you are living in a rented apartment, when you use FOSS you live in your own house. This covers pluses and minuses very well, indeed. Proprietary software is supported by it's owner till it thinks it's good business - just like most problems with your rented apartment are solved by landlord, not by you... if it makes business sense. Free software is yours - and if there are probems with plumbing you may deicde to contract someone (this will be distributors) to fix that, or if you don't know anyone who'll do it "just right" you can do it yourself. People know difference between rent and ownership very well, indeed. IMNSHO it's much, MUCH, MUCH better anologue then slavery accusations by free software proponents.
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I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 19, 2012 10:58 UTC (Thu) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> Free software is yours - and if there are probems with plumbing you may deicde to contract someone (this will be distributors) to fix that, or if you don't know anyone who'll do it "just right" you can do it yourself.
Except that coming back to my original point, chances that the home owner will be able to fix the plumbing themselves or find someone to do it at an affordable price are pretty good. Chances that a non-programmer will be able to fix a bug in their free software themselves or find someone to do it at an affordable price are much lower, so they are much more dependent on the good will of others for their software fixes than said home owner for their plumbing.
I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 19, 2012 18:06 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
>Chances that a non-programmer will be able to fix a bug in their free software themselves or find someone to do it at an affordable price are much lower, so they are much more dependent on the good will of others for their software fixes than said home owner for their plumbing.
This is, surely, merely due to the youth of the market. It should change as open source becomes more 'normal' for average people.
I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 19, 2012 20:17 UTC (Thu) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]
> Except that coming back to my original point, chances that the home owner
> will be able to fix the plumbing themselves or find someone to do it at an > affordable price are pretty good. Chances that a non-programmer will be > able to fix a bug in their free software themselves or find someone to do > it at an affordable price are much lower, so they are much more dependent > on the good will of others for their software fixes than said home owner > for their plumbing.
You really think you can get a plumber to fix your pipes cheaper than you can get a freelance/contract programmer to fix some open source bug for you? Either you've got incredibly cheap plumbers locally, or incredibly overpriced programmers! Or, you're really talking about more than fixing a simple bug, and instead talking about major functional changes; in which case, you need to change your plumber scenario to the cost of ripping out and installing all new pipes throughout the house...
I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 20, 2012 8:20 UTC (Fri) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> You really think you can get a plumber to fix your pipes cheaper than you can get a freelance/contract programmer to fix some open source bug for you? Either you've got incredibly cheap plumbers locally, or incredibly overpriced programmers!
I must admit that I live in rented accommodation, so perhaps I just don't appreciate the prices. But if I may call your bluff, can you point me to the web site of a reasonably priced programming shop that will fix bugs in free software for the average person?
I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 20, 2012 11:29 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]
There are various web sites that hook people up with freelance programmers to work on various projects:
http://www.guru.com/
But, you could probably find someone willing and more capable of doing it right on the project's official mailing list or something! And, let's be truthful here: most of the time, you aren't even going to need to pay them a cent to fix the bug, because they'll WANT to fix it... However, if they won't, you do have plenty of options to get it fixed...
I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 20, 2012 13:34 UTC (Fri) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> There are various web sites that hook people up with freelance programmers to work on various projects: [...]
I will have a look at those when I have time to try to work out what a typical bug-fix (if there is such a thing) would cost. I would expect it to be quite high, since unless you find programmers already familiar with the project you want a fix for you have all the overhead of the programmer understanding what you want, understanding the problem and getting to grips with the code before they can even begin fixing, and the overhead of communicating with the project owners to get the fix accepted afterwards (always harder than one would naively expect, unless one has been in the shoes of the project owners before).
> But, you could probably find someone willing and more capable of doing it right on the project's official mailing list or something! And, let's be truthful here: most of the time, you aren't even going to need to pay them a cent to fix the bug, because they'll WANT to fix it...
I certainly know that we (VirtualBox) have lots and lots of open bug tickets that no one has ever even found time to look at. And I thought that we were better than average, but perhaps I am wrong there.
I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 20, 2012 14:08 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]
> and the overhead of communicating with the project owners to get the fix
> accepted afterwards (always harder than one would naively expect, unless > one has been in the shoes of the project owners before).
I had kind of assumed that in the case of needing to go to an outside party to get your fixes, that this step wouldn't even be done... Ie: upstream wasn't interested in this fix (or doesn't see it as a "fix" for anything), so you're effectively taking on your own fork...
> I certainly know that we (VirtualBox) have lots and lots of open bug
Sure... But, if someone posted that they considered one bug in particular to be VERY serious for them, and they were willing to pay you to fix it, don't you think that might spur you into tackling it?
I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 20, 2012 14:37 UTC (Fri) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> Ie: upstream wasn't interested in this fix (or doesn't see it as a "fix" for anything), so you're effectively taking on your own fork...
That means that you are either foregoing all future fixes to the software or that you are willing to pay for future maintenance of your branch - how much do your local plumbers charge?
> Sure... But, if someone posted that they considered one bug in particular to be VERY serious for them, and they were willing to pay you to fix it, don't you think that might spur you into tackling it?
Almost everyone considers their particular bug to be very serious, some even telling us that it makes the product unusable (even if no one else has ever hit it and told us) and that it is not acceptable that we don't fix it immediately. A few do suggest paying us, but we would have a conflict of interest if we took their money for a fix done on work time (maybe even out of work time?) and I am usually not convinced enough that someone would put forward enough money to make it worth sacrificing precious free time for the job - my feeling is that they tend to be thinking of one or two hundred Euros, which by the time you have fixed the problem and done proper quality assurance on the fix (not to mention administrative overhead for freelance work, as I'm not currently working freelance on other things) is too little money.
I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 20, 2012 15:09 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]
> That means that you are either foregoing all future fixes to the software
Lots of people are perfectly content (even happier) running out-of-date software... Look at RHEL/CentOS... As long as you've got the important fixes, especially those that actually matter to you, many are happy to live without whatever new features (and most likely new bugs) newer versions bring... Yes, there may be some fixes in there, as well; if they're important enough, they can be ported into the local version, and you can surely find someone to do it...
> how much do your local plumbers charge?
A lot... But, the point is: much like plumbing problems, hopefully the need to do future software fixes will be a fairly rare thing... Yes, if you're using a bleeding-edge version of actively developed software, it's obviously going to continue having new bugs to deal with... But, an old stable product? Hopefully, you won't run into many very often, just as your pipes hopefully won't spring new leaks every week...
> Almost everyone considers their particular bug to be very serious
Don't I know it... But, far fewer truly care enough about it to put up (much) money to fix it... You're probably right that most of them wouldn't pay enough to even make it tempting... But, that in no way implies that someone couldn't pay to get it fixed if they truly wanted to and were willing to spend the money on it... It may not be cheap, but then neither will that plumber's visit or that auto mechanic's bill... And, unlike those, there's a really good chance you might just possibly find someone willing to fix it for you absolutely free, simply for the joy of coding...
I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 20, 2012 15:43 UTC (Fri) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> But, that in no way implies that someone couldn't pay to get it fixed if they truly wanted to and were willing to spend the money on it...
People really willing to spend the money are often well-served by support contracts. But due to the way that they let/make private users pool their money together (game theory anyone?) I think that proprietary projects have the edge on affordable fixes for those people - and an incentive to actively look for and make those fixes. See also [1] though for my other ideas on the subject.
I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 20, 2012 16:08 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]
> I think that proprietary projects have the edge on affordable fixes for those people
Possibly, in some cases... But, there's also the possibility that the proprietary software company just doesn't want to fix your particular issue for whatever reason (they don't see it as a bug, or are worried fixing it might break compatability, or whatever)... In that case, you're completely out of luck, unless you can find someone good with a disassembler and hacking assembly code these days (and willing to break the law to do so, since that's probably illegal)... With open source, at least you have the option to go elsewhere for your fix, if you should deem it important enough to do so...
As for your other comment about the bug bounty, I think that's a great idea... It'd be cool to see a little "Donate towards getting this bug fixed!" button on every open bug tracking entry... I don't know how many would do it, but I suspect the popular ones would get quite a few people throwing a few bucks at it... Of course, it might also encourage less scrupulous programmers from adding in bugs deliberately only to claim the bounties on them later... But, hopefully that'd be seen through fairly quickly, especially in an open source project... More likely, I suspect it would encourage new contributors to join in trying to fix the popular bugs, which can only really be a good thing...
I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 20, 2012 16:47 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
as someone who has paid for custom fixed and patches to opensource code, I'll say that getting a major change done to opensource code is significantly cheaper than getting any change done to proprietary code (through professional services).
it's not as cheap as a plumber fixing a clogged drain, but the costs compared to getting changes and fixes in proprietary code are still much lower
I think martinfick offered great metaphor... Posted Jan 20, 2012 17:03 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]
> it's not as cheap as a plumber fixing a clogged drain
People call plumbers for that? Other than Liquid Plumber, I mean? ;-)
I was thinking more along the lines of repairing/replacing a busted/leaking pipe in my comparison...
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