The whole idea is that if everybody contributes back to the community, then alot more productivity will be produced as a result. It's like everyone helping to build a house rather than 1 person working on it for a LONG time
Nemos, you bring up another interesting point. That is relying on opensource doesn't mean free software development cost. In fact in some cases, the cost may be higher due to the complexity and lack of information. However, tapping from opensource community proves to be useful in most cases.
@anandvy I think people were more interested in desktop Linux back when Windows wasn't very good.
But starting with Windows XP, those complaints kind of went away. And time has proven that Windows XP desktops have been far easier to maintain, long-term, than Linux.
And then there are the security/compatibility/ease-of-use/software issues...
I do agree that in a way it doesn't make sense that Linux on the desktop isn't really a topic anymore especially considering so many apps are in the cloud anyway, but given how happy most admins/users are with Windows these days it's just kind of a moot point.
@hardcore - Yes. I can totally see the freerider problems in the opensource realm. But this is not just a problem in China or Asia. It's everywhere. There really isn't much that we can do about the freeriders. But when they develop something and tries to sell it, they cannot "patent" or "license" it since it's open source code. That would be illegal. The laws should enforce strict rules to catch that if they attempted to do that.
That said, freefriding is omnipresent everywhere in open source community. Take for example discussion Forum such as "buying deals". There will always be people more willing to contribute their ideas in the forum and some willl just keep absorbing the tips but never contribute. Yet having this forum will still be better than having none. Because at the end of the day, more people buy the discounted products and will stimulate the growth of the economy.
I have worked on and am still working with the Linux kernel, point 3 is indeed critical, in fact the ideal way (and the way the developers prefer )is actually file one problem as an individual bug.
The advantage is that one bug can then be taken up by one developer, without the need to worry about other developers conflicting on the work, once you get to more than a few bugs , it then requires someone to 'manage' the bug list , over who is doing what, or worse still takes a developers time to split the list up and file each item separately.
so it is not surprising that a larger list would be 'bounced', consider that whilst developers are dealing with paperwork, they are not fixing bugs.
One issue I have found with open source and some China/Asian companies, is that they flatly refuse to give back to the community and yet they are quite happy to push others to abide by the 'open source rules', further to this , there is actually a number of China based companies that remove copyright notices and program details from what is supposed to be open-source code.
This is currently very prevalent in most if not all of the Tablet and phone makers in ShenZhen South China.
I spoke to one company as regards to getting access to 'their' source, and yet they were fairly aggressive in demanding the release of code I myself was working on for the linux kernel, specifically because it related to embedded devices and would allow them to leapfrog their competitors.
Unfortunately many companies are not playing by the rules as regards open-source.
Great post!! You dealt with most of the issues that we fave everyday in the Opensource community.
The best part of your post was this line here,
"Relationships with de facto project leads and active contributors can result in added influence over the direction of a project."
Why was this line key?Its because you need responsibility to run and control a project.Its not good enough having hundreds of contributors contributing like Ants if there is'nt a Queen Bee/Mother Ant controlling the strings of the entire project.That's precisely what Project Leads and Active contributors tend to do.
As someone who has been an active contributor of Dozens of Open source projects over the years this is the key takeaway point.Even orphaned software projects can get a tremendous push if someone is willing to take the responsibility and show enthusiasm for the project.
Αmazing and very interesting responses from the readers, and giving the sense that Open source community hasa longandpromisingwaytogo.
I would like to mention that we shouldn't use the open source implements to reduce our software developing costs , and of course takes time for searching if you want to use open source code . But we should use open source community if we want to improve our software.
@Dave True, there is not much hype about Desktop Linux these days. I remember 15 years back installing Linux on you desktop was big thing, because installing drivers for Keyboard, Network card, Screen was very difficult. But these days its pretty straight forward. Am not sure why people lost interest in Linux based desktops.
Point number 3 is so true. This reflects the motto "Release early, release often" that's often heard among open-source communities. Beta-testers who are also developers really help push the product to achieve good quality.
It’s been a while since I heard any hype about desktop Linux.I do hear about Linux more when it comes to server implementations, but rarely desktop anymore.Those looking for an alternative to Microsoft are now migrating towards Apple’s Mac.Both of which are not open source.
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