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The Cathedral and the Bizarre

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Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#71

Post by [deleted] »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #57
ohazi wrote: post #41

It sounds like this guy has some sort of axe to grind, but he's wrong. His argument rests on the claim that "most open source code is poor or unusable." When most people refer to Open Source Software, they're referring to serious projects like the Linux kernel, Apache, PostreSQL, Firefox, etc. They're not referring to random crap on Github. The serious projects are actually better than their closed-source counterpart…

> most open source code is poor or unusable Is there any special reason to believe that closed source is any better? If we can count the sea of abandonware on Github, then we get to count the mountain of "interesting" code that remains internal to large companies, or worse, the stuff that actually got released on unsuspecting customers.

[deleted]

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#72

Post by zzo38computer »

ohazi wrote: post #41

It sounds like this guy has some sort of axe to grind, but he's wrong. His argument rests on the claim that "most open source code is poor or unusable." When most people refer to Open Source Software, they're referring to serious projects like the Linux kernel, Apache, PostreSQL, Firefox, etc. They're not referring to random crap on Github. The serious projects are actually better than their closed-source counterpart…

Those things I agree with it. The good open-source programs mostly are better than other programs in these ways.

Yes there will be many badly written programs (I think someone said that 90% of anything will be not very good), but there is good stuff too. I think it may be the case even with the closed sources, but in that case they are unavailable so we will not have any statistics about it.

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#73

Post by gliese1337 »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #58
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most open source code is poor or unusable Is there any special reason to believe that closed source is any better? If we can count the sea of abandonware on Github, then we get to count the mountain of "interesting" code that remains internal to large companies, or worse, the stuff that actually got released on unsuspecting customers.

Generally, a business pays developers to write software that it expects to be put to immediate use, which means that most of the time it functions, at least minimally. I'm sure exceptions exist, of course. FLOSS abandonware has no such constraint.

My first six months of employment at my current job consisted of going from one project to another that the C-levels listed as "a top priority for the company"--like, called all-hands meetings and told everyone about this great thing and how important the people working on it were--and then decided to cancel.

Two years later, that still happens from time to time.

So, from my point of view, it looks much more like businesses pay developers to write software to be thrown away. Which I guess is fine with me, as long as my paycheck keeps coming....

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#74

Post by sdenton4 »

joppy wrote: post #36
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.

Bourbaki were certainly made up of a collection of leading mathematicians, but the works of Bourbaki are not innovations themselves. As much as I love the books, they do not contain major new results, rather they are an excellent organisation of pre-existing knowledge, perhaps with some novel proofs.

Meh. Bourbaki is merely indicative... Someone who believes that only individuals can produce theorems hasn't really worked in mathematics.

It's a no true Scotsman argument.

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#75

Post by zzo38computer »

"However the problem is that the open source user may not stumble on this magical fraction and the invisible iceberg of buggy, ill-conceived open source lies submerged ... open source uses massive amounts of user time trawling through defunct and buggy applications and posting to forums ..." Regardless of what you are looking for (open source computer programs, closed source computer programs, television shows, books, etc) some won't be so good, or might be difference what you need for your use, and so they have reviews about such thing.

"An awful lot of popular open source is inferior reverse-engineered copies of existing commercial software (Gimp, OpenOffice etc)." Is Gimp a reverse-engineered copy of existing software? Just because it is similar to some proprietary software does not necessarily mean that it is a "reverse-engineered copy" of it. OpenOffice presumably involves the reverse-engineered formats of Microsoft Office, although now there is LibreOffice. Both Microsoft Office and LibreOffice each have some features the other lacks. What is "inferior" may also depend on your opinion, because in some cases it isn't so clear, and in some cases it may be inferior in some ways but superior in others.

"If open source programmers do innovate and their innovation is good then its just as likely to be swept away from them by the corporations who have the capital to exploit it." In my experience that doesn't always happen. Many features first implemented in GNU/Linux systems are things that they did not implement similar features in Windows until much later.

"... the Linux desktop still lags behind Windows and the interface looks stuck in the 90s." Actually, I think both in Linux and Windows many programs try to be too fancy, but in Linux I can change the window manager and all of that stuff easily and still works. I uninstalled the desktop environment, and I think it works much better than Windows ever did, actually.

"Good software is properly documented, does not break and does not require hand-holding to use it." True, but that isn't the issue; the issue is customizing it.

Love of money is the root of all evil.

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#76

Post by zzo38computer »

newnewpdro wrote: post #31

Unfinished experiments that aspire(d) to be something relevant are more like vaporware, not abandonware. I'd argue the vast majority of what's on github is this or dirty hacks that never warranted any further development or maintenance. There's actually substantial value in access to such things. Rather than repeating the experiments yourself, you can go see where they led others without investing the time and energy…

That is a good point. Sometimes the code is useful even if it is incomplete. (I have sometimes done such things, taking parts of other programs; more often, I write most of the code myself, but some of it will come from other sources like that. As an example, I found the source code for a JPEG encoder, and modified it to improve the compression and other things. There are many other such cases too.)

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#77

Post by codyb »

perl4ever wrote: post #63
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, a business pays developers to write software that it expects to be put to immediate use, which means that most of the time it functions, at least minimally. I'm sure exceptions exist, of course. FLOSS abandonware has no such constraint.

Generally, expectations do not define reality. I'm not just being contrary, I've worked on a project for a year or two that got scrapped, and I think it happens a lot. Another way to look at it, is that if you have programmers that are regular employees and not temps or something, you might as well have them work on something that's not very important, or that's risky, when you don't have something better for them to…

I’m convinced if they stopped paying us all to rewrite things that work the market would fall out from under us.

Every job I’ve ever been involved with has always had some code base that was in framework X and now needs to be in framework Y, or on in house hardware and needs to move to the cloud, etc etc.

And having just interviewed every place has a project like that. “We were using PHP for the mvp but are moving to RoR”, “We were using class based react but now we’re using hooks”, etc etc.

I feel half of it is valuable migrations and half of it is to always have something on our plates.

And it always has to get done yesterday. What a world.

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#78

Post by hodgesrm »

ohazi wrote: post #41

It sounds like this guy has some sort of axe to grind, but he's wrong. His argument rests on the claim that "most open source code is poor or unusable." When most people refer to Open Source Software, they're referring to serious projects like the Linux kernel, Apache, PostreSQL, Firefox, etc. They're not referring to random crap on Github. The serious projects are actually better than their closed-source counterpart…

The author is wrong on innovation as well usability. One of his arguments is summarized as follows:

> [Open source] did not reward innovation. The most successful products of open source are knockoffs of old ideas; Linux included.

So what about Spark? What about Python numpy, pandas, and scikit-learn? Most people don't just use them because they are open source. They are innovative solutions to difficult problems.

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#79

Post by iudqnolq »

drongoking wrote: post #60
iudqnolq wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, he makes a weak argument by analogy > This lesser-known fact is masked by the isolated points fallacy. The isolated points fallacy consists in taking the high scoring points on a graph and plotting your line on the basis of them. Hence open source champions wheel out the standard examples of success - Open Office, Wordpress and Red Hat Linux (we'll look at why some of these have succeeded later)…

I don't buy his argument and I think he's confused. Lots of people have released code on github (as have I) so that other people can use it. Lots of it isn't used, so it looks abandoned. Maybe it is. So what? Why is that considered a failure of Open Source? I think he's applying closed source's rules. A closed source project is a failure if no one uses (ie, buys) it, since it represents a development cost that wasn't…

I agree. When I first started programming I put a program close to hello world on Github. I suppose that's counted as abandoned?

Also, I'm sure everyone's seen a closed source project that went nowhere?

Re: The Cathedral and the Bizarre

#80

Post by codyb »

bsder wrote: post #61
traverseda wrote: post #6

I have like 30 projects on github, I don't expect any of them to really go anywhere, it's just where I put stuff when I'm playing with a new concept. There are ~3 projects that I would have actually have liked to go somewhere, real projects not toys, that I have abandoned. So that "98% of projects" statistic is fair, but I think those numbers would be looking a lot better if you accounted for the fact that github is…

> I have like 30 projects on github, I don't expect any of them to really go anywhere, it's just where I put stuff when I'm playing with a new concept. Then why put it there? git works fine without github. And by putting your projects on github all you did was add to the baseline white noise that people have to filter through.

For backups, ease of access, and so potential clients and employers can see. Although most of my newer work resides on my privately hosted gitea.
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