Re: os discuss

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>Sorry, but you can't ignore the invisible hand of the
>market place.  Deadlines ARE important.  And, as time
>goes by, software DOES become obsolete.

All true.  One of the frustration of working with Open Source projects such as Samba is the vague-ness of their goals and objectives.  Fortunately projects like Samba are recognizing this and using project management tools,  but that movement is still in it's infancy, and smaller projects may simply never deploy such things.  Lack of a "head" with vested self-intrest is one of the things that make Open Source great and succesful,  lack of a "head" entirely is one of it's greatest weaknesses.

>The Open Source model works because there is a David
>and Goliath competition going on.  In a more level
>playing field, where smaller companies are competing for
>smaller pieces of the market, it's not as clear that
>this laid-back approach to deadlines would work.  And,
>by extension, that the Open Source model would work.

I'm not sure I follow this.  What are some "smaller" markets that you speak of?  Niche applications (IMHO) is Open Source's home turf, and where it really shines.  Someone with ONE purpose can create a truely awesome tool for that ONE purpose,  more out of personal passion to fill the need, than necessarily for financial gain (which may be a "side" benefit for solving a problem).  For example,  note the absence of a pre-eminate word processor that is GPL-ed.  I think the OS model falls aport more often when attacking broad and general problems.

>This article cited below is either naive or biased in
>it's allusion to the Open Source model being flawless.
 
I'd say optimistic, not naive.  I think business will "take over" alot of Open Source project in time (witness GNOME),  but I don't think that will make it necessarily less open.  HP, Sun, and IBM can co-fund a third-party developement organization to provide a whiz-bang desktop application architecure for less than any one could develope it for themselves (which they've pretty much proven that they can't).  That's not idle speculation, because it's exactly what the GNOME foundation is,  HP and Sun have adopted GNOME as their OS's default desktop, and IBM will eventually (it just does everything in IBM time).  In the end this helps Linux as well, as a GNOME app is a GNOME app.