> At 12:11 AM 9/13/00 -0500, Kendall Clark wrote:
> >
> >I think this is largely a stereotype; after all, what's more
> >condescending? Microsoft's Talking Paperclip, and the attitude that
> >ordinary people are too stupid to really understand anything about
> >their computers; or giving away your code to the world at
> >large to read, study, and learn from, and then assembling that code
> >into operating systems that are challenging but give users a
> >tremendous amount of power.
>
>
> giving away code, as far as i can tell, is all about showing everyone how
> big your dick is. it is a competition, one upmanship. not much about
> sharing and caring in that practice, if you ask me. it's about how big a
> MAN you are for sharing. with the emphasis on "voluntary giving" and being
> in position to be able to do so w/o much reflexivity on how one got
> there. who's the 3133+ H4x0R d00d???!! :)
Wow, well, you haven't been paying attention, have you? Sure, that kind of thing goes on, but no more than it does in any field, especially academia.
But this is the kind of thing that shows that you can "study" the "scene" all you want but you still aren't getting it. If you've never written code, if you've never administered an enterprise system, etc., you won't understand. Real hackers prefer open source because:
1) Security - with source code you can know that you are getting what you think you are getting. 2) Customizable - missing feature foo, no need for feature bar? Then change it. 3) Support - I work with open source software, and I work with million dollar enterprise software. Hands down, support I get from the "scene", via irc and usenet and some mailing lists, is more accurate and comes much more quickly than support I pay for. 4) Performance - open source software often (although not always) outperforms closed source software 5) Price - open source software is often free software
Hackers aren't stupid, snit. We realise that those benefits aren't "free". They come at a price, and the price is to give back to the community, if you can.
It seems like you are basing your assessment on, e.g., rantings by Theo De Raadt from a few years ago on Bugtraq (which has gone to shite IMNSHO[1]) where he was bashing everything but OpenBSD. Sure, that was big-dick-slinging, but that is an aberration. You aren't even considering all the people who submit bug fixes, code suggestions, etc., who are barely mentioned, if they are mentioned at all. Hell, snit, I'm a contributor to the open source movement. I'm not the greatest C coder (hence I went into networking and security :-)) but I've done some bug fixing for a few projects here and there. Outside of purely technical discussions, this is the first I've mentioned it. I am the norm as far as open source developers are concerned. When I want to sling around my big dick, I talk about my guns, or my stereo. :-)
> what else explains the why open source isn't really open source? eh?
Uh....what? Are you referring to the restrictive nature of the GPL? If so, consider the BSD license.
Matt
1. And in going to shite, there are increasing examples of what may be called dick-slinging. However, also in going to shite, it has less and less to do with the "scene". Its become mainstream, something suits care about, something lusers have heard of. Just like Wired (*spit*). Hell, even /. , sometimes.
-- Matt Cramer <cramer at voicenet.com> http://www.voicenet.com/~cramer/ "Hold your fire" - that's what I told the FBI.
-Kool Keith