Comments on: The community is angry!

The community has spoken, and it is ANGRY. Why? Good question.

[PierreTDC]

So Matt since the acquisition of c|net by CBS you've decided to pull off (If I may say) a Janet Jackson all by yourself? ;-)

Seriously I'm not sure I see a big problem with your post either. You're just expressing a common business point of view.

I think part of the ambiguity lies in the fact that the code is going to the community but the cash is going to the company... So it's fair only if one is reasonably sure that this cash somewhat profits the community too... (which is probably harder to demonstrate with a DL model)

[jrepenning]

I suspect your step into blasphemy was in the previous paragraph:

> Ultimately, someone must pay for software in order to have it written. It doesn't grow on trees
> and it doesn't grow on communities, either.

One of the interesting things about open-source communitarianism is the extent to which it expects the structure (either financial or social) to be too low-key to actually name itself. You violated the gentlemen's agreement.

[Savio.Rodrigues]

Matt, I'm glad today isn't "most days" then ;-)

I too wish we could achieve the open-source ideal that you and Benjamin speak of. I'm not sure how oss vendors would make substantial money in such a situation, but it would be nice none the less. In a way, the situation that Benjamin describes is often found at Apache in multi-vendor projects.

[PiddlyD]

I don't get it - Perhaps the comments were so hard to understand because you're not very clear on what you are proposing, Matt. I didn't read the original article, but it sounds like you are suggesting that; the majority of users do not contribute in any manner, but simply "leech", for lack of a better word. It seems you want to institute some model that forces mandatory involvement, either by paying or by contributing some sort of skill. Sounds like Darth Vadar's plan (Or Bill Gates) for cleaning up the "Anarchists of the Open Source Rebellion", to me.

At the end, I don't see what it will get you. A handful of Open Source projects achieve "the ideal" because they are well implemented, well thought out, meet a real need, and have some sort of significant benefit to the community. The rest "die on the vine" because they don't meet one or more of these criteria.

Here is the shocker, it is the SAME way in closed-source application development, too. Good applications grow and flourish. Ones that are ill conceived or executed, or have no real purpose, "die on the vine". Adding money doesn't fix that. At the best, it allows crappy applications that have no real reason to be to exist LONGER than they should.

Software, like everything else, seems to follow some varient of the 80/20 rule. 20% of the software has some value and is well executed and worth having... the other 80% never really makes it out of the conceptual stage, even if you can buy it in a nice retail box at Best Buy.

But maybe I'm missing your point - it seems like THAT might have "died on the vine", as well.