Yes, I would consider that a side-benefit to FOSS: some other user probably encountered it and fixed it and shared the fix and if not, well I have the source and can fix.
> reliance on this sort of community may work for some things, but the
> community didn't do a lot of bug finding or testing when it came to
> chandler. maybe that is because people, perceiving it as a funded project,
> refused to do so. maybe it's because, as roseberg hints, iirc, that
> chandler needed to have been put out there, bad shit and all, and develop
> it in "a patchy" way. ha ha. :)
Perhaps. But this program seems to be one that is only useful if you buy into particular developers' thought processes surrounding how to do task management. I encounter a lot of software like this and because it is trying to paint with such a broad brush ('the task management system everyone can use to do everything!' - pretty ambitious!) and accomplish so much, it is doomed to failure. Bottom line - this software will make things I easily do with Evernote+Thunderbird+Firefox+a few google apps much more complicated. No thanks!
> also, the problems rosenburg identifies are not with poor project
> management. rather, he notes that the 'bazaar' model (remember! there was
> an entire book published online advocating the 'bazaar' model of open
> source development, as opposed to the bad, 'cathedral' model) doesn't work
> the way it was advertised.
OK, if esr is the owner of the straw argument, then I am with you. I thought that book was crap and believed he was FOS.
So if we are just discussing the Stallman vs. esr definitions and their specific benefits of FOSS - then I am in the Stallman camp. Didn't we already know esr was wrong?
> for another, rosenburg's argument is that it may
> just be in the limited way we conceptualized what we do. i remember
> woodchuck writing about these years ago on dc-stuff, pointing out that
> 'file' was a really bad way to thinking about computing.
I agree with him - a desktop with file folders is a really bad way to think about computing. The analogy distorts.
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 12:07:56PM -0400, shag carpet bomb wrote:
> ok. back up.
>
> why, then, is open source touted as preferable to closed source?
>
> so far, the *only* advantages are to those who want to dig into the
> code --
> with *wanting* to dig into the code not necessarily inclusive of all
> those
> who know howto dig into the code.
>
> what else? is there a *social* advantage to doing things the open
> source way?
The political and social advantage is that GPL software can never be taken away from the user by a corporation or a government. Every government or corporate anti-social practice facilitated by software (spying, DRM, forced obsolescence, etc.) can be mitigated by software that carries the GPL.
That in many (some? few but enough? - whatever words you want that absolves us of addressing every failure that happened to have a GPL) cases, software with a GPL is more efficient to use (true cost to deploy + cost to support + percentage uptime) is just an added bonus.
It is the side benefit that my employer cares about, although they were skeptical for a long time (the previously mentioned need for someone to blame and a number to call when it breaks). They care little about the political implications of their decision to deploy a web application using Apache+JBOSS on Linux vs. Microsoft.
Matt
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There are only two kinds of artists: the plagiarists and the revolutionaries.
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