Women in Technology

Article:		Myths Open Source Developers Tell Ourselves
Subject:		Rather like a 'rant'
Date:		2003-12-12 02:18:25
From:		anonymous2
I think that these 'myths' that you speak about aren't myths, because people don't believe or don't try to believe what you're saying. If your premise is correct then the open source development community is doomed because its filled with people who tried to "lie" to themselves. Seeing that this premise is not correct, in my opinion, the article is really takes the wrong approach to addressing the real problems of open source development that you allude to in your piece. That is, managing software projects so that their development is smooth and their acceptance by the public is wide. If I also may be so bold, it seems like the author was probably involved in some difficult project that went nowhere. You can read it between the lines. Everybody in this business should get used to the simple facts of human life - on the user side, you can't get something for nothing. One the developer side, you will always meet with ungrateful people.

Showing messages 1 through 7 of 7.

• Rather like a 'rant'
  2003-12-12 11:20:40  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I've found the article very well written, true and needed. Thank you.
• Rather like a 'rant'
  2003-12-12 13:54:05  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  that's because you're an idiot.
• Rather like a 'rant'
  2003-12-13 02:13:16  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  -1, Troll

• Rather like a 'rant'
  2003-12-12 09:34:13  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I think this was a very well written piece on the real-life issues facing a development team (be that open source or behind a corporate firewall). I also think that calling all of these points "myths" is worthwhile. The real problem with myths is not when people choose to believe them with their eyes open, understanding what the pros and cons are. The real problem is when people believe that the "myth" is absolute truth and give it no further thought.
  

  
  The successful development teams out there have undoubtedly figured out the distinctions the author is trying to point out. This article is not for them... It is for the rest of the people who have not yet "skinned their knee" on one of these "myths" and learned how to avoid the problem in the future.

• Self-consciousness? not yet
  2003-12-15 21:29:10  yaseppochi [View]
  
  
  Hopefully said, but true?
  
  It would be nice if that were true. However, as Watts Humphrey and the SEI people are at pains to point out, people rarely do know how they got to be successful. That's why Humphrey (and more generally folks like Peters and Waterhouse) sells well, and deservedly so.
  
  I expect that a lot of "successful" teams would benefit from reading this article and saying to themselves, "now, we avoided that myth, but just how did we do it?" And even more so, less successful teams would benefit if they could articulate what they did as a "best practice" recommendation.
  

• Rather like a 'rant'
  2003-12-12 04:20:20  sanchonevesgraca [View]
  
  
  The author of this article wrote a good piece about open source software development and its culture. Because there is such a culture, it makes sense to analyse it and publish such analyses. Many open source projects are successful because they are interesting to a community. This article is a voicing of a member of the community. The anonymous posting is, on the other hand, one of those ungrateful remarks.
  
• Rather like a 'rant'
  2003-12-12 11:08:50  chromatic | [View]
  
  
  I don't find the parent's remarks as ungrateful. I'd be surprised to find many active open source developers who said they believe these myths... but you can certainly see a lot of projects that act as if the developers believed these ideas.
  
  There's a lot of great software out there. Imagine how much better it would be if we could improve our development skills!