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Seven essential qualities of open source
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Re: Seven essential qualities of open source
Good points. Re: #6, I nominate Stef as TXP5 SABDFL but I guess that would be too democratic
Last edited by maruchan (2012-01-12 18:07:12)
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Re: Seven essential qualities of open source
Interesting read, though I disagree on some points.
you don’t pay for open-source software. But neither do you get the extras that are standard with proprietary software: ease of installation, support, documentation, and so on
Seriously? So Adobe Photoshop (in fact, Adobe anything) is easy to install, well supported and documented? I think not. Adobe don’t know the meaning of user-centric documentation; the products are a pig to install; and their support makes eBay customer service look good.
software developers are not altruists. Like everyone else in the labor market, they are rational actors, and well-paid ones at that.
Assumption: a person working on an open-source project (like me) is a software developer by trade. Professionally, I’m not. I’m faaaar from it: a self-taught hacker who does it because I can. Music and sound engineering is my thing. As is creative writing. The day I’m labelled a true software developer is a sad day for developerkind because I tarnish their good reputation :-)
Granted I know some stuff and can talk cohesion, coupling and all that crap they made me write down at uni, but I don’t practise it.
I hack, therefore I am.
maruchan wrote:
I nominate Stef as TXP5 SABDFL
Ha ha! Dictator, probably. I’d proffer it more accurately stands for Software Architect But Doesn’t Fancy LISP.
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
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Re: Seven essential qualities of open source
Bloke wrote:
Seriously? So Adobe Photoshop (in fact, Adobe anything) is easy to install, well supported and documented? I think not. Adobe don’t know the meaning of user-centric documentation; the products are a pig to install; and their support makes eBay customer service look good.
I agree that he was pretty far off on that point. Not to single out a single product, but I can think of many proprietary software products that I have paid actually money for and then had to rely on the user community to support.
And in fact, I have not bought things because the company had not bothered to develop their user community and I had no reason to believe that there was going to be anyone to answer questions not covered in the basic documentation.
Last edited by michaelkpate (2012-01-14 15:28:36)
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Re: Seven essential qualities of open source
The author thoroughly confuses “open source” with “free software”. From there on, it gets worse. If money was the only motivator as this essay implies, there’d be no charities, no Red Cross. And no Textpattern.
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