[LINK] Linux deviation impedes developers

[Danny Yee]

Chirgwin, Richard wrote:
> 1) Too much open source coalesces around The Gurus. And they're just
> clay-footed humans like the rest of us: prone to ego, and liable to pursue
> agendas based on who they like and don't like. The meritocracy of open
> source is already giving way to an egotocracy.

I don't think this is true.  I think the "original meritocracy" is
a myth and that free software development is, if anything, getting
more open and more transparent and less dependent on individuals.

Linux itself is one of the exceptions here.

> 2) Any time any commercial entity touches the open source world, it has to
> put up with /. abuse.

It's important to distinguish between proprietary and commercial.
Certainly not all commercial entities cop abuse on /. -- Red Hat, for
example, almost always has more defenders than attackers.  And even
*proprietary* software usually only cops abuse if it's some kind of
rip-off.  (So generally comments about Word Perfect for Linux were
positive, even though that was and is proprietary software.)

> 3) It's also time to untie what's good for software from the various
> hippie-gun nut-socialist-individualist political agendas. Nobody cares
> whether open source is an expression of (variously) free love, the right to
> bear arms, anti-capitalism, or the supremacy of the individual. Most people
> want stuff that works.
 
Very few people do link free software to any of those agendas.
Personally, I think that's a bad thing -- I think free software _is_
a phenomenon of political importance.

Danny.