[GNUz] There Is No Open Source Community

[Richard Tindall]

Jim Cheetham wrote:

>Decent article at OnLamp, reminding us that just because it's "accepted
>wisdom" doesn't mean it's actually true ...
>
>http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2006/01/12/no_oss_community.html
>
>-jim
>  
>
Interesting, thanks Jim.

Maybe he's been reading hackstop.org ?

Certainly I'd concur with the obseration that software prices must move 
"asymptotic to zero", but for slightly different reasons like 'the 
developing world will always outcompete the advanced world on production 
costs'.

I'm not sure there's so much that is new here, or where the argument is 
going exactly, if not to boil everything down into 'business can't argue 
with open-source' yet again. Because that's true, but limiting 
statements to business palatability mostly raises doubt as to why it is 
deemed necessary to do this. (Reactionary credit points with HAL?)

I think it's a matter of recognising that there is advantage in growth 
in more than one direction at a time. So rather than counterposing 
promotion of FOSS in business, or for its ethics, do both. And start 
working on ways to stop tripping over each other and so neutralising the 
two campaign energies. Turn the debate outward, away from internal schism.

The Open Source 'revisioning' primarily raises the question of what is 
the agenda for doing it; what is the fear that drives it? - that RMS may 
have been correct? That desocialisation of more than just software 
was/is damaging, and continues to be so?

The atomisation of our communities, of our associated lives - and the 
constant weakening of everyone 'small' vis a vis 'higher powers' - is 
the main problem bought into by this author, through his befuddlement 
around "powerful individuals" (in concept and in person) from the start 
of the article, I feel.

Whereas we actually know that larger groups, social segments, and 
underlying dynamics often get represented by skilled producers as 
spokepeople, but that noone gains from obsession with their fame. There 
is always more to a story than any individual operator, choice, or report.

O(Reilly)pen Source is clearly an important, self-promoting, and 
purgative business now, but is that all?

-- 
Richard Tindall, InfoHelp Services <http://www.infohelp.co.nz>, on:
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