[Bloat] 25 years of open source - where we went wrong, and how to fix it

[Dave Taht]

Since we are coming up on the 25th anniversary of open source, it's
been weighing on my mind a lot, particularly in time of war both
physical and economic.

This think piece by dan geer just went by...

https://www.lawfareblog.com/should-uncle-sam-worry-about-foreign-open-source-software-geographic-known-unknowns-and-open-source

If somehow we could gather together all the pioneers of the transition
between free software and "open source", and ask them - what's gone
wrong in the last 25 years, and how to fix it, perhaps we'd see a
brighter future than we do today.

For me, I pin the first place where things went wrong with the failure
of redhat's attempt to reward all its FOSS contributors with stock at
the IPO price to become custom for other IPOs in the last 24 years.
How much better would it have been for all of those contributing to
have seen some ongoing reward for shoveling their best efforts into
the commons? Especially the weird, wild ones, whose special skills are
underappreciated, and business and personal sense of preservation
lacking.

I remember how good I felt then to have been a part of this sea change
in software development.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB934482235810277867

And how burdened I feel now with contributing - and especially
maintaining - a thing, under any license. Perhaps an idea like
redhat's will make a comeback.

The second place where things have gone wrong is that "open" has gone
orwellian, and "open source processes", too often not followed. The
world is now full of "open source", that doesn't have a tight feedback
loop and regular contributors - a goodly portion of Apple's OS is
"open source", but is published a year after it ships. "Open Source"
orgs like prplfoundation, rdk-b, and the telecom-infrastructure
project require financial hurdles to enter- and the "management stack"
is pay to play, as in linux foundation and so many other vendor
sponsored orgs. I'm happy to see that starlink did a GPL dump of their
router, but it was unbuildable, and has garnered no contributors due
to the software locks on the product.

I'm sure others can think of other things that have gone awry... and
hopefully, suggest ways in some forum wider than this, to fix them.

"Ubiquity, like great power, requires of us great responsibility. It
changes our duties, and it changes the kind of people we have to be to
meet those duties. It is no longer enough for hackers to think like
explorers and artists and revolutionaries; now we have to be civil
engineers as well, and identify with the people who keep the sewers
unclogged and the electrical grid humming and the roads mended.
Creativity was never enough by itself, it always had to be backed up
with craftsmanship and care – but now, our standards of craftsmanship
and care must rise to new levels because the consequences of failure
are so much more grave." - http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4196

On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 1:25 PM Bruce Perens <bruce at perens.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 5:31 PM Dave Taht <dave.taht at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 1:45 AM Bruce Perens via Starlink
>> I have rather hated the return  of over-processed communications in
>> the last decade, and the lack of a place to yell back at the screen. I
>> liked blogs and websites and media that had comments, and better, had
>> authors that read the comments.
>
>
> I do notice that a lot of retail companies have PR mechanisms that note their detractors, and they reach out and try to solve problems. I have had some offer retroactive discounts after I noted issues online.
>
>> I like a wacking good, long form, debate... which is why I miss netnews and email so much.
>
>
> I don't think it's the medium so much as the demographic. Many of us here thought for decades that we would enhance freedom and democracy through the internet. It didn't work out the way we expected. Our view was biased by the fact that the early internet demographic was technical folks who valued logic and argument to consensus. The later internet doesn't have that same demographic.
>
> And you can be sure that I did not mean for Open Source to be mainly something that large businesses would participate in for their own benefit. There are a lot of folks who re-stated the goals of Open Source after the fact. I was just trying to reach people who would not have been sympathetic to RMS's presentation. I care a lot more for the people than for companies that could not possibly need my help.

My top post was spawned by you saying this and thinking about it too long.


-- 
This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC