Women in Technology

Article:		Myths Open Source Developers Tell Ourselves
Subject:		OMFG
Date:		2003-12-12 17:32:58
From:		anonymous2
Response to: OMFG
Actually, this article is dead-bloody-on and your a) reading skills; and b) knowledge of running your own project, are lacking. This person knows exactly what (s)he's talking about. First of all, shut up about "the movement". If you discount the obnoxious Linux zealots (who don't actually write much code anyway) there is no movement. Writing code is not a religious crusade unless you're a spotty 15-year-old with a chip on your shoulder (i.e. much of the Slashdot readership). Code shouldn't be political. Just ask people who've done a lot of it. Guys like Linus. Second, I am the owner of 2 sourceforge projects, one of which is quite popular and is translated to 10 languages, and is used all over the world including universities such as Harvard, and has been around since 1998 or so. Want to know how many code contributions I've had? Maybe 5 or thereabouts. The other is a HUGE, 7-year, OS project which nobody cares about, frankly. My experience is, if it's not Linux, who cares? If the same attitudes had prevailed 10 years ago, Linux wouldn't exist today. The author of this article is explicitly *not* talking about Linux, PHP, apache, Gnome, KDE, etc., because they are exceptions. They are big famous projects. Lots of little dudes want to try and ride on the coattails of big famous projects. Take a real look at the other 10,000 or so on sourceforge for pete's sake. The vast majority are described by this article, to a T. Bundles is not spelt "bundels"; there are probably lots of open source spellcheckers the "movement" should investigate.

Showing messages 1 through 3 of 3.

• OMFG
  2003-12-14 16:56:13  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  <blockquote>
  My experience is, if it's not Linux, who cares? If the same attitudes had prevailed 10 years ago, Linux wouldn't exist today.
  </blockquote>
  
  

  How many people contributed to GCC "back in the day", how many to emacs ... how about gawk or gtar. This isn't something you can "blame on those Linux 15 year olds", it's just plain old normal behaviour.
  

  
  

  And FYI, recently I've seen a lot more 30 odd year old ex-windows company IT people using Linux than 15 year olds ... and the 15 year olds are more likely to want to help, for one reason or another. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of a "back in the good ol' days, when we all ran NET2 and liked it" rant.
  

  
  
• OMFG
  2003-12-15 02:42:22  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Sigh. Your reading skills aren't very good either. This wasn't a BITGOD rant at all.
  
  The bit you quote above refers to the fact that no one cares about new O(perating)S(ystem) projects that aren't Linux (or *BSD obviously).
  
  People say "why bother when we've got Linux?" or "you should be spending your energy helping Linux instead" -- two stupid sentiments for fairly obvious reasons. If those attitudes had prevailed 10 years ago, there would be no Linux. See?

• OMFG
  2003-12-13 01:32:54  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I couldnt agree with this person more....
  
  I too am a "very" new owner of an sf.net project, and probably the main reason why my project has progressed in bits and pieces is because i was expecting "feedback" and "support" from the so called "millions of open source supporters" around the world...
  
  The project that i own is ofcourse still on, but the article and this note posted (at 2003-12-12 17:32:58) above has been of quite good help in bringing me to some stark realities...
  
  Hats off, and thanx to both once again.
  The project will surely stay on.
  
  ... just with less expectation and more self-contribution.
  
  rbs