Posted by Noj | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 07-04-2011
While I was in Uni, almost every lecturer whinged about how evil X corporation was. There were rants about google, microsoft, apple e.t.c It was a nice thing to laugh about but now that I am working full time as a software developer I have this strange feeling that “open-source” is a whole new religion on its own, which has fun in bashing others. Don’t get me wrong, there are great open source projects and great commercial projects as well. Its a great culture, there needs to be the right balance between sharing and protecting intellectual information so the world could be more and more innovative.
Fragmentation
Before I went deep into linux, there were all this good articles such as it will be the year of linux next year because of X,Y,Z. Well, the year of linux has always been for some reason been “N+1″ where N is the current year. Google’s Android and Canonical’s Ubuntu have been the best when it comes to serving the non-technical market. Developing products that “just work”. But even then the major problem with being open-source, is because anyone can fork the source code, its very easy to fragment. Android Fragmentation article and Linux Fragmentation article here. There are more than 200 Linux Distros with many things horribly incompatible with each other. Even in the web land we need to use “-moz-, -webkit-, -o-” to make things work. Android apps are incompatible with different phones. It just creates a huge mess. Someone new would just raise their hands in the air and stay with what they are comfortable with.
Frustration
To a person who just wants to get work done, incompatibilities and fragmentation produces huge amounts of frustration when little help is available. Especially in linux world where most replies are “RTFM” (Read the fucking manual). As most projects are worked on by volunteers, there isn’t much motivation like the commercial world to provide great support and always put the “User First” or solve the “User’s Problem”. The Free in linux sometimes comes with a huge cost in hours wasted trying to even accomplish the simplest things. It is often found that some developers are selfish in the name of open-source. They would take the code and sell it under a different name. Some would only make X feature work for themselves in the most obfuscated way, and not give a rat’s ass about other users. Recently in a project we were playing around with Digi Embedded Linux. It had a “Busy Box” based OS. We had to recompile the kernel several times trying to figure out which drivers to include for wireless. Even the simplest thing as connecting to a wireless network took us two days to figure out. We haven’t yet found an effective way to connect to a secured network. The wireless drivers still crash halfway, google offers little help. The documentation is not elegant. Where is the engineering capability of “you press a button and we do the rest” ?
Survival of the Fittest
Make software that people would want and make their lives better. Sell it to them in return of a favour. That favour could be money and resources so you could solve even more problems. How fucking hard is that ?
Apple is successful because they make desirable products and can get it to customers. Microsoft is successful because they make OS’s that just work. Google is successful because their search engine can provide answers better than anyone else. Facebook is successful because they can connect people better than anyone else. None of this companies would be that successful if they weren’t control freaks. Even wikipedia is a control freak with what articles they approve. If they don’t meet certain qualities, they are taken down. People vote with their actions and not with their voices.
But then again, I am not perfect, so why should I expect the world to be perfect ? It could be my lack of experience for the new product. Change is hard to get used to 
On the brighter side I learnt something I didn’t know 
Everything, I mean everything is wrong in this article.
There are many GNU/Linux distributions but not so many families (incl derivatives etc): Distribution Statistics – Independence
Within one family GNU/Linux distributions are not so incompatible.
You’re expressing your frustration – that’s understandable if you learn something new and/or trying to do something relatively advanced. What do you want from readers? Pity?
Learning could be fun – perhaps if someone would supply a ready-to-use solution you wouldn’t be doing this at all.
Not exciting? So what? Are we going to blame the world for not being perfect according to your convenience?
You mixed up everything – Free and Open Source with commercial; Philosophy with “bashing”; Freedom with control – this one you getting especially wrong:
Among problems with proprietary (not commercial) software is unwillingness to cooperate and comply with open standards. I have a feeling that when you say “control” you mean dictatorship like when you’re not allowed to drive where you want. Open Source and Wikipedia are “control freaks” in terms of regulations you need to comply with, to drive wherever you want but according to rules – those regulations, pretty much as road rules are not stopping you from going where you want but merely help all to drive safely together.
Making software better takes time. IT is a young industry and as software engineer you have capacity to influence it toward friendliness.
Canonical’s Ubuntu always was (and still is) mediocre when it comes to non-technical market. You would know what I mean if you try Mandriva, OpenSUSE or even Parsix.
Apple is successful the same way plastic bags are successful. Does majority of buyers use plastic bags? Yes. Are plastic bags improved shopper’s experience? Yes. However plastic bags are wrong due to high “carbon footpring”, toxic emissions, pollution and recycling problems. Individual convenience here achieved at the expense of more important values.
“Microsoft makes OS that just work” – give me a break – you don’t know what you’re talking about. (I’d like to know for whom exactly it “just works” because I suspect I don’t know anyone)
I agree under some (limited) circumstances Windows “just works” and it is just worthless by itself without software.
When comparing operating system (Windows) to GNU/Linux distribution keep in mind that distribution is more than just operating system, but OS plus the whole software collection.
Blaming everything for your moment of frustration won’t do any good. Unless you have something to say please hold your compulsion to write empty, emotional articles like this one.
In this article there are way too many generalizations, wrong conclusions and unsubstantiated statements to carry any value for the reader.
I apologise for my emotional response – this answer is indeed incomplete and adresses only fraction of problems with original article. Let’s write something valuable next time – shall we?
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