Good reply, thanks.You

skeptic — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:06:46 +0000

Good reply, thanks.

You misunderstand me on one point: I was refering to Ajax, XHTML, video, Google Maps, and RSS as cool gadgets that open source porgrammers seem to fixate on, not as examples of open source itself. What I meant was I wish the programmers would concentrate more on some basics like security, scalability and sound architectures instead of banging together some "home-movie" code and throwing it out there.

You make a good point that most of my experience of open source is with PHP, so if you say the programming is of better standards in other environments I can't dispute that. Anyone else comment?

I do agree that the foundation stuff, Linux, MySQL etc is robust and good. (But where are the admin and query toools for MySQL on Linux? PHPMyAdmin is beautifully functional - though a decade behind the MySQL Windows tools, but I find it hilarious that the same peope who wrote and use it are probably slinging mud at Windows and IE security, because PHPMyAdmin security is a joke. And as a user of Apache, without having seen the source, I must say some of it looks a bit klunky, dare i say kludgy, usability-wise. I like to assume that is because all the design is focused on the internal engine, which appears to be rock solid).

No, I'm more concerned at the stuff that fizzes around on top of these: CMSs and application packages and tools and such, user-contrib stuff rather than committee-managed core stuff.

My experience is narrow here, so I look to comments from others such as yours to clarify my understanding. Thanks.

Are you really talking about open source?

K Weinberg — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 19:40:39 +0000

I feel the same frustrations that you do re: technology -- even about the same technologies that you list (Ajax, XHTML, video, Google Maps, RSS…). Where we disagree is that you think the problem is open-source and I think that has nothing to do with it.

Look at your list: Ajax, XHTML, video, Google Maps, RSS…. Either they aren't "source" at all or they're straight-up commercial hype from the Silicon Madison avenue (quite the opposite of open-source).

I think what you are decrying is shallow commercialized faddism. A destructive, marketing driven force that seems more potent in technology circles than it is in the rest of our economy. Why? Because _most people don't know how technology works_ so it is easier to lie about it, create hype, and then grossly dissapoint when the product under-delivers (and then hope that you don't have to give the money back).

I would argue that open-source has been the antidote to much of that. Outside of PHP open-source (which really has attracted some rock-headed programmers), I see some of the most elegant, built-to-last, foundational OS, browser, scripting-language, compiler, database, filesharing, and other software that we have available coming out of open-source. OSS projects first took a lot of fundamental systems and commoditized them away, and now many of them are pushing the envelope.

Why? The OSS stuff was built for someone to _use_ -- not for someone to sell. No one wins when you the OSS stuff is unusable -- not in the short term and certainly not in the long term. There is nothing hidden and nothing to lie about. If it has warts -- no one can tell you they aren't there.

If you are tired of broken electronic promises and feel jilted at the cash register, I would suggest that more OSS is part of the cure, not part of the problem.

The IT Skeptic - Comments for "The Craftsman and the Bazaar"

Good reply, thanks.You

Are you really talking about open source?