James Mansion wrote:
And they start to find it hard to make time to spend time on
anything that isn't work - ie open source projects. I've seen
That *was* my point.
this happen on a number of occasions. And contrary to what
you're suggesting, they don't turn up an opensolaris, sometime
later (or at least none have, yet.)
I think you misunderstood. I didn't think I was that unclear!
*I* think the Linux 'model' is flawed. Take away the amateurs,
and you have a small number of full time engineers, who are
in Linux' case diluted by ineffective management and lack of
shared purpose. Sun is in a *good* position. Why pander to
the amateur masses? They won't make Solaris better through
code contribution.
If the amateur masses with a small number of ineffecitvely
managed full time engineers can produce a product that
has been able to threaten a well engineered product such
as Solaris, how would you propose responding to that?
Especially if a large portion of the market (ie the level
req'd to support bringing Solaris to you) decides that
near enough is good enough?
If the amateur masses can drive innovation and pursue
bringing more features to OpenSolaris, isn't that something
to be pursued and capitalised on, especially if it acts
as a gap filler?
have some sense of community? (Chances are they never stopped
reading the email, etc, they just stopped being really active.)
So? Unless they manage a datacentre or otherwise buy
or specify, they're just Joe Public. Do you really *need*
the ones who have that responsibility and flunk it to choose
based on years-ago amateur hacking relationships?
Wow. You do realise that this is an incredibly over
generalised statement and that it insults a lot of people
you've likely never met, never mind understood what
they've done or do?
I don't know any open source developers who would consider
the needs of users as being unimportant. The point of my
comment (which you seen to have missed) isn't that developers
are more important than users but that open source projects
dont need managers, directors, VPs, etc, to drive them and
I disagree. Someone needs to tell the 'freedom' zealots
that users generally want 'Just Works' and don't care if
the code was compiled by nVidia and shipped as a blob.
I don't know any 'freedom' zealots inside Sun but I'm
sure they're out there somewhere. The point of that
is to say that just because someone is an open source
developer doesn't mean they are a 'freedom' zealot.
A lot of people I know would be quite happy with binary
blobs, so long as they could be used on their platform
of choice.
developers than its users, you'd be in for a rough ride.
Really? I've been asked to find the bug and send a patch
rather than been given any constructive help many times.
The point is made as 'we are all volunteers'.
I can't speak for these other people but I will say that
it is always appreciated when someone who knows
anything about programming is able to do something
towards helping resolve a bug besides just report it.
Well, I just
don't care - if you are part of the 'we make the OS' crowd
then saying that to the 'we use the OS' crowd doesn't cut
it. The compensation arrangements inside the 'we make the
OS' crowd is really not my business, and I don't see why
my expectation of an OS product should be clouded by it.
It sounds like your expectations of what an open source
product should be and what they actually are aren't in
100% alignment. Rather than say one or the other is at
fault, I would recommend that you continue using Solaris
or other products that meet your needs.
Darren
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