Women in Technology

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Article:		Myths Open Source Developers Tell Ourselves
Subject:		Thank God someone said it!
Date:		2003-12-12 11:46:23
From:		anonymous2

I've spent a lot of time with open source projects. I use them, I write them, I almost love them. They serve various uses within software development. However there are open source zealots who go around saying that open source is the magic key to solving the worlds software development problems - and quite franky it isn't. I would have thrown in one more thing for the authors list: * documentation/support is generally terrible and noone seems interested in writing or maintaining it. If open source wants to have an impact in corporate circles, it almost always ends up being commercialized (RedHat, Ximian, etc) before people really end up using it. There is nothing wrong with this, and open sourcers need to accept that people will commercialize their efforts and they will serve a market who needs more than just 'free software'.

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Thank God someone said it!
2003-12-12 13:50:13 anonymous2 [View]

When they start an open source or shareware project, most developers are oblivious to the effort required to support users, and it is often the reason the developer later abandons it. It's one thing to stay up all night cranking out code, quite another to respond to desperate emails from users who don't know where the "any key" is...