Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Cathedral and the Bizarre

marktarver.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 130 posts

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#21

Post by dev_tty01 »

xorand wrote: post #2

>...an article puts the abandonment rate of open source projects on Github at about 98% - meaning that there is no activity on 98% of projects after a year [0]. This has coined a phrase - abandonware. I'm not a programmer, I'm a researcher. Let me tell you a fact: about 100% of research articles are not updated. Somehow the link [0] cited in the article makes an indirect similar point, but what's wrong with programs…

I agree. There are plenty of good points to consider in the article, but this is not one of them. Lots and lots of things on Github are little experiments that someone tried out and made available so that others can benefit from what they learned or tried. That can be called 'abandonware' in order to reinforce a straw man, or it could also be called a source of community learning.

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#22

Post by randy5235 »

Palomides wrote: post #4

there's a lot of nits to pick about this essay, but the real punchline is that corporations have reaped the profits from open source software, far more than any developers do directly, and that claim seems hard to dispute.

I can't argue with this assertion. Can we start discussing how to correct this a bit. I have no issue with corporations reaping profits from open source software but would love to see more developers benefiting directly.

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#23

Post by galaxyLogic »

I've put some code I wrote up on GitHub. Why did I do it?

1. As a learning experience, how does GitHub work?

2. As advertisement for myself as software developer

3. As a check on myself, is the software good enough for others to use. When you do something publicly "on stage" it better be good. Not only good in terms of "code quality" but in terms of "does it do something useful?".

So I think I've got some benefits from publishing my code as open source. Not financially, like the corporations.

I think the world is still waiting for a better monetizing model for opens source, as well as for component-software in general. As things go Cloud, I think such a model will eventually if not soon emerge.

On the article, I found this to the point:

"The truth revealed that OpenSSL was seriously underfinanced with only one full time operative working on a code base of hundreds of thousands of lines of C."

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#24

Post by thaumasiotes »

xorand wrote: post #2

>...an article puts the abandonment rate of open source projects on Github at about 98% - meaning that there is no activity on 98% of projects after a year [0]. This has coined a phrase - abandonware. I'm not a programmer, I'm a researcher. Let me tell you a fact: about 100% of research articles are not updated. Somehow the link [0] cited in the article makes an indirect similar point, but what's wrong with programs…

> This has coined a phrase - abandonware.

Huh. "Abandonware" is a very old word as far as internet culture goes, referring to something entirely different.

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#25

Post by thaumasiotes »

sildur wrote: post #18
sdenton4 wrote: post #17

"No mathematical theorem, no enjoyable novel, no work of art of any importance, have ever been produced by a herd. I fail to see why innovative software ought to play by a different set of rules." Nobody tell this guy about Bourbaki... He's also probably never enjoyed a movie.

A novel also is produced by a “herd”. There are a lot of people involved. People that make suggestions, corrections, the editor... It’s not a single person effort.

Naked Came the Stranger was written, not just produced, by a herd, to massive success. (It was intended to fail, and the herd writing was an element of that intention, but none of that stopped it from experiencing massive success.)

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#27

Post by r00fus »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #23

I've put some code I wrote up on GitHub. Why did I do it? 1. As a learning experience, how does GitHub work? 2. As advertisement for myself as software developer 3. As a check on myself, is the software good enough for others to use. When you do something publicly "on stage" it better be good. Not only good in terms of "code quality" but in terms of "does it do something useful?". So I think I've got some benefits fr…

I've got another one:

4. Breaking down that barrier of perfectionism that prevents you from publishing or finding worth in your creations.

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#29

Post by r00fus »

This article seems to leave out why open-source changed it's meaning from "source available" to "source shared". That results from the FSF, GNU, copyleft and the rise of Linux.

⌘-F show only two references to GNU or Stallman, both derogatory references to Emacs. All references to Linux are about how early versions sucked and how it was a "copy" of Unix.

This highlights a lack of understanding from the author which may explain a lot of the viewpoints.

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#30

Post by hitekker »

> There's a larger group of not-so-harmless people than the givers who are driven by greed for free stuff and a sense of entitlement. We can call these the takers. Takers are generally abusive if their entitlement is challenged; because to criticise the open source model is to take away their intellectual candy and the result is a tantrum. Amongst this larger group are a smaller group of DRM crackers and pirates. In nearly all open source projects, they outnumber the givers. Michael 'Monty' Widenius, an open source advocate, acknowledges the problem.

> Help create a generation of takers that believed that all code should be open source and embraced open source as a religion. Online bullying of dissent began in forums. A large number of believers then traded 'code' for 'digitisable media' and the most active of those went in for DRM cracking and piracy.

Judging by the comments so far, I think he struck a nerve.

Post reply on HN