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Programming IT Technology

NYT On Open Source 60

Posted by Roblimo from the mostly-harmless dept.
KOHb writes: "The NY Times has a front-Web page article on using Open Source to bridge the "Software Gap." Mentions Mozilla, Apache, and other friends." Well-researched piece, talks of potential changes in software development -- both positive and negative -- as the Open Source model spreads. (Free, reg. req. to read.)
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NYT on Open Source

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  • A challenge isn't a bad thing - any sort of major change is a challenge to companies.

    For most of them, dealing with open source is a big challenge. On one hand, it's cutting into their sales. On the other hand, they are wary of releasing their 'crown jewels' because there are few recorded cases of companies which have released previously-closed software and made a profit from it. (Red Hat, etc., don't count since they are mostly packaging already available software, as contrasted w/ MS, Oracle, etc., which make tons of money from their privately developed closed product.)

    While talking about open-sourcing software generates good publicity and lots of feel-good support, it must be kept in mind that the main goal of companies is to make money, and based on the past few quarters, none of the major players is losing their shirt from doing business as it is. But then, OSS is definitely cutting into sales. From that perspective, the whole open source movement is a big challenge to companies, in the sense of figuring out a way to continue to make money and also ride the popularity of the OSS wave (they are not interested in ideology).

    I remember an old interview w/ Jim Gray in a database magazine (I think D. Programming & Design), in which he describes his reason for joining MS - along the lines of, if you can't beat them, join them, or something similar. In any case, there's nothing inherently evil about joining MS - if he had joined a competitor, it would have been equally closed source. Almost every company was in the 80s.

    w/m
  • Yeah, the quote concerning MS's move towards service-based software is a little confusing (or deceptive, depending on your take). The service based approach that the Times was talking about initially concerns taking software and customizing it, or offering support, much like the models that Red Hat and others use now. The software itself is free, but you pay for additional support, convenience, and if you want something very unique done. The service model that MS has in mind (and this I have heard directly out of Steve Balmer's mouth at a speach) is more like a cable subscription, where instead of owning anything on your own machine, applications are fed to you on a metered or by-period rate. Two very, very different models that sound deceptively similar when all they say is "service based"

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
  • I've seen a /. .sig about famous people doing that. I respect Mr. Joy's ability to code but his views on sociology ("People will be irrelevant") and the social dynamics of groups strike me as warped.

  • free software isn't the most important cause in the world

    True ... but a case can be made that you defend freedoms when and where you can ... thin end of the wedge and all that.

    InfoTech will become increasingly important in economies and personal life. Free Software means more access to quality goods and services, and lessens monopolistic tendencies by mega corps ... who knows ... it has a lot of opportunity to help fix a lot of seemingly unrelated problems.

  • This could just have easily been "its Linux network crashed"... If you read the link it says an application failed - it does not look like there is enough detail or info to assume that the NT Network or OS crashed.

    The highest cause of failure is badly managed systems, followed by badly written applications.

    I've seen really good apps run on NT, and really bad apps run (or limp rather) on NT - but thats not NT's fault.

  • I do agree with his perspective that a large mass of people will simply never be able to match the work a few skilled programmers.

    Conversely, a few skilled programmers will never be able to match the work of a large mass of people. Thomas Alva Edison (who arguably knew what he was talking about) had some choice words on the relationship between genius, inspiration, and perspiration.

    Jim Grey earlier writings pointed out a key problem: those geniuses laboring away in a closet are all too often duplicating work that's already been done.
  • Why? Because the oldest and most successful projects are the best examples, almost by definiton of how open source/free software can succeed.

    If you want some newer examples, I can provide some, but they are obviously more vulnerable to accusations that they aren't finished or are incomplete, or not up to par with the competition.

    Gtk/Gnome. No, it's not like, totally dominant, or the main player in toolkits or anything, but it is getting bigger, and garnering more attention. Probably gnome (and/or KDE) is the biggest new free software project.

    Postfix and qmail are growing in as new MTA's. Python and Enlightenment both are comparatively new. Mozilla's arguably not new, but moving along, even if not as fast as people had hoped. (quick: name a free or proprietary software package that met it's most optimistic estimates for ship date ;) Dozens of smaller "niche" applications exist, but because they don't have a large target audience aren't as visible.

    Despite the projects being old, new stuff is happening in apache, and perl, and the linux kernel.

  • I saw the article on NYT's web page this morning and immediately read it, thinking that since the article appears on the front page, it will probably educate many non-techs about other options that are available when purchasing software for business or home use.

    For the most part, it's a fair article, talking about the issues and concerns of open source. It correctly mentions that businesses aren't going to jump right into this without some reassurances and that a balance must be reached between the needs of those who philosophically believe in free software and the business community where the bottom line matters more.

    Unfortunately, there was almost no discussion of Richard Stallman (RMS) and his beliefs about free software. His name was mentioned in a single sentence which described him as a "revered programmer" and didn't really detail his beliefs.

    Now, while I've got a huge amount of respect for RMS, I don't necessarily agree with his beliefs that all software should be free and that we should try everything possible to eliminate closed-source proprietary software. On the other hand, any article that talks about open source cannot do justice to the topic without at least giving a description of how "free software" differs from open source and how a huge percentage of what is generally considered "open source" is actually free software protected by the GNU license. One example of this is Linux.

    While some may consider RMS' politics to be on the radical fringe of software development, his ideas have influenced the development of Linux, which is used by the authors of the article as one of their primary examples. Instead, the authors seem to dismiss Stallman as not "pragmatic." This seems somewhat strange, as one of the other major points of the article is a description of how some new models for open source permit parts of the software to remain closed source. This would be impossible given the current GNU license with Linux and it would have been nice for the article to do more than brush over those distinctions.

    /EJS

  • Conversely, a few skilled programmers will never be able to match the work of a large mass of people. Thomas Alva Edison (who arguably knew what he was talking about) had some choice words on the relationship between genius, inspiration, and perspiration.
    Yes and no. First, I don't believe Joy ever claimed that these masses could do nothing worthwhile; rather, he asserted that it is not a magic bullet.

    Second, Joy did not refute that Open Source had some merit. He was, in fact, one of the original open source developers. He did say that there were some time savings involved. No doubt he was referring to lessening of duplication of work.

    Third, Edison's view on exertion is hardly relevent to this situation. He never, to my knowledge, stated anything about large groups of people combining their efforts. In other words, just because invention is 99% effort, does not mean you can add up that effort amongst people.

    In fact, it is somewhat ironic that you bring Edison up. It is Edison, and those like him, who I'd first call up in defense on the singular driven closed source model. They were all, after all, individuals who brought about great progess by really throwing themselves into the problem. In my view, Open Source's problem is less that a bunch of people want to contribute, then it is the fact that it LACKS those few key individuals working full time on the task at hand. Though I object to the word genius, it is foolish to underestimate the value of maximizing the output of these key men, especially when taken in context of the thousands of fools in their same day who could not, or would not, do it.
  • Apache is not GPL!
  • I actually don't really mind if companies try to make a buck by going to an Application-Service-Provider model (providing application services over a network for a fee) - I think this is a legitimate business model which can benefit both the companies & the consumers (the companies can get a steady revenue stream & not worry about piracy, while the customers can get access to powerful servers, services & continual updates).

    The point where I get annoyed, however, is if those companies try and make sure that their service is the ONLY service I can use - including the possibility of using standalone applications that OTHER people/companies have written, or stuff I've written myself. Especially if they are using the law to create artificial constraints on my usage of my own equipment.
  • In case you dont remember,

    login: free-news
    password: slashdot
  • Yes. I, too, think famous people do speak beyond their expertise. On the other hand, though Joy is not expert on sociology, he has seen these group dynamics in a context that many others have not. This is not to say that his conclusions are right necessarily, but within the context of what he knows it in (i.e., developing complex software), he may well be right on the money.

    I think an intelligent person should make every effort to listen to those people in the center of things, even if some of what they say is wrong. For instance, I might be able to learn a lot about the weather from, say, a superstitious fisherman. Not because his science is accurate [he believes in magic and the like], but because he's been there time and time again, and he's noticed a certain cause and effect. I may not listen to his views on philosophy or science, but dammit, when I see him heading back to port, I'd be well advised to check things out.
  • Why? Because the oldest and most successful projects are the best examples, almost by definiton of how open source/free software can succeed.

    It is like reading those articles about violent video games that mention DOOM and Mortal Kombat--games from seven and eight years ago. Perl and Apache are stock answers that are trotted out without any thought. They've become trite examples of Open Source that make it seem like nothing new is happening. They are excellent projects, yes, but not good examples of the supposed revolution that has happened in the last few years. One of the touted points of Open Source, mind you, is that it is lighter on its collective feet than corporate developed software. This is gotten across by citing examples of projects that pre-dated the wide awareness of open source?
  • It seems the more important part of the article, that everyone seemed to miss, is that "the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, will recommend that the federal government back "open source software as an alternate path for software development"".

    Chris Hagar
  • Your first point is just plain wrong. The author was saying that the "the two marketplace triumphs of open source...are derivative". By "two marketplace triumphs", it talks in the next line about Apache (although it's incorrect in saying Linux is a version of the Unix operating system).

    Chris Hagar

  • 50,000 (Score:1)

    by mmca ( 180858 )

    Of the estimated five million software programmers worldwide, Mr. Behlendorf figures that fewer than 50,000 participate in open-source projects. "The goal is to bring what works from open source into this other 99 percent of the programming community," he said.

    Is that number (50,000) low? Or is that about right? Is that counting just coders? How about people who document and all the other things that need to be done to have a sucessful project.
  • I think the NYT guys and the Salon guys are sitting in a room with the CNET and the ZDNET guys. Sure, I can see it now.

    It is the only freaking way so many different sources can all write the same damn article over and over again. Not only have we all read this same article from different sources but it has been done better. They would serve better by providing a link to one of those articles done by a more technically adept writer.

    Two years ago, it was exciting to see this kind of article and it is still neat to hear Sun or someone say they are using a open source project desktop environment (GNOME of course).

    Still can't the mainstream press stop spewing the same message over and over again. God, there is enough stuff going on that we don't have to recycle the same messages endlessly. You would think they never read each other's stuff, and I know they do.

  • Actually, I fall on the RMS side of the fence as well. Just don't think it falls into quite so dramatic terms; as RMS himself has said, free software isn't the most important cause in the world...
    --
  • The media feeds on the media. Linux and Open Source are newsworthy so they do something on Linux and Open Source. They do what they can with the resources they have, and the result is "would somebody get a clue? Please!" You might be able to get a good take on the situation from Harvard or Yale, from a standpoint of History or Sociology -- but don't hold your breath.
    With the current state of affairs, the /. commentary may be the only extant useful source of information.
  • I haven't got my copy yet, but I'd like to suggest you read The Software Conspiracy [softwareconspiracy.com]:
    There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed... The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's absolutely not. It's the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard... And so, in no sense, is stability a reason to move to a new version. It's never a reason.

    -- Bill Gates

    While you're waiting for your copy to arrive, spend some time browsing at The Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems [ncl.ac.uk].

    While Slashdot discussed the government's reluctance to accept Open Source in Linux -- Government Acceptance vs. Actual Use [slashdot.org], apparently our Nation's proud warriors have no problem putting our nation at risk at the hands of a closed-source operating system as evidenced in USS Yorktown dead in water after divide by zero [ncl.ac.uk]. The mighty Yorktown had to be towed back into port after its NT network crashed when a sailor entered a "0" into a data entry field.

  • Is that number (50,000) low?

    Actually, I thought it was rather high... just think, if each one of the 50,000 people wrote only 1000 lines of good, useable code a year, in less than three years we could have the source code for Win2000!

    Oh no, wait, I said "good, useable code"... scratch that idea.

  • A very good article . . . (Score:3)

    by himi ( 29186 ) on Sunday August 27, 2000 @11:28PM (#823840) Homepage
    This is one of the few articles I've seen in the `mainstream press' that actually covers almost the whole gamut of the open source movement and it's effects. It's well researched, and well balanced. It even manages to put mozilla in the light it deserves - a project that started slowly, made mistakes, learnt from them, and is now going strongly (I'm posting this from a three-day old nightly - it's very nice).

    One or two things that I found rather interesting: The quote from Jim Gray at MS - he views open source as a "challenge" . . . I may be over-analysing a throwaway line, but that sound like MS looking at open source as a challenge to their position (which it is), rather than as a potential opportunity for them and the rest of the industry (which it also is).

    Also, the comment from Brian Behlendorf: 5e+6 software engineers, maybe 5e+4 working on open source projects. Those numbers sound pretty reasonable - I mean, there are something like 20,000 people on lkml, supposedly, and I'd bet that list would include a fair portion of OS developers.
    And by an odd coincidence, the top percentile of programmers are supposedly something like an order of magnitude or two more productive/effective than the remainder . . .

    I suspect that the OS world overlaps far more than statistics would suggest with that top percentile, and that a fair portion of it's success has been due to that.

    How's this for an idea? Rather than try and get more and more people working on OS projects, we aim more for getting the OS methodology accepted, and possibly even taught, so that rather than going into proprietary software houses, any new top-percentile programmers go straight int OS . . .
    That might sound elitist, but I think it's fairly reasonable - there really is that kind of productivity difference, so we might as well try and make the most of it . . .

    himi
    --
  • > Hmmmm . . . I think I've over used `innovation' here . . . ;-)

    Trolling for an interview at Microsoft?

    --
  • The truth is, great software comes from great programmers, not from a large number of people slaving away," Mr. Joy said. "Open source can be useful. It can speed things up. But it's not new, and it's not holy water."

    This is probably quoted a bit out of context, but it's quite bogus. There's no doubt that getting many people involved in the source helps find bugs. The myth of one brilliant guy spinning out perfect code died in the early 80s when programs became too big. The only way to write great programs today is to work with other programmers and working with other programmers is ten times easier if you can read their code.

    It's too bad that the author didn't have enough time or space to question this a bit more.

  • It's not just vendors that this happens at. I worked long hours at a bank not long ago, as part of a team trying to meet a ludicrous deadline. Mistakes were made, and the software went into production in a horrible mess. The result of this - all the bosses got fat promotions. There needs to be a whole sea-change in IT management thinking before any change occurs, and judging by client-server, downsizing, Y2K and now the internet, it isn't going to happen anytime soon.
  • Yeah, good thing Linux advocates don't repeat the "sell service and t-shirts instead" mantra when someone asks how you make money to pay the rent, cleverly ignoring the reality that most decent software doesn't NEED support and that people can only wear so many 'GIMP' T-shirts.
  • Is that DeCSS mirror illegal in Australia?

  • A push for new examples of open source success (Score:3)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Monday August 28, 2000 @05:34AM (#823846)
    If open source is so big, why do articles--even in techie Linux magazines--always cite the same tired old examples: Perl, Apache, Linux kernel, etc. Heck, those were big examples *before* all the Cathedral & Bazaar publicity.
  • Nice try, but the grammar is a little too bad to be believed.
    --Shoeboy
  • If open source is so big, why do articles--even in techie Linux magazines--always cite the same tired old examples: Perl, Apache, Linux kernel, etc.

    How about building a web server into the Kernel, as Redhat just did in a joint effort with Dell, and break the hits-per-second threshold of ALL operating systems?

  • I believe that showing the code in that fashion would fall under the moniker of "fair use", and hence the code can be used in such a fashion without adhering to the GPL.
  • I think I've over used `innovation' here

    ...because you could get a lucrative job as a speech writer for Al Gore.

  • heheh... I replied to the wrong post. do some mental transformations.

    z.
  • Is this not based on the assumption that none of their closed source competitors do things significantly differently?

    I can, to some extent, sympathise with this rather cynical viewpoint, but their competitors are not in court over their basic business practices. MS is, and has repeatedly been, certainly as far back as Jim Gray's defection to MS. He had to know.

    Just an observation. To me, if there is evil it is in what you are willing to condone...

  • I have to agree. The article mentioned only one problem with OSS that I noted, which was with Mozilla (and righfully so). Then they go ahead and show the other side of that story. I like open source, but shouldn't this be an article with the good and the bad? The bad is excused here, and everything is "open source advocates say..." and no word from the other side of the coin. I would have preferred a more unbiased approach.
  • Did you ever consider the possibility that the old guard does know what they're talking about? Or that recently acclaimed "Open Source" accomplishments are not, in fact, that much of an accomplishment [in terms of technical ability/effort/innovation]? Though I'm not nearly old guard (in the way that Bill Joy, et. al, is), I do agree with his perspective that a large mass of people will simply never be able to match the work a few skilled programmers. Where highly modularized code like Linux may do okay in a decentralized open source environment, there are many [dare I even say most] areas where this simply does not work.

    If you can't respect Bill Joy's opinion, whose can you respect? Bill Joy is an accomplished programmer and he's been there and done that, so to speak, with Open Source software. How many other people can really claim that level of experience? How many people who have tend to fall in line with his? It seems to me the majority of the views of those whom I respect fall in line with Joy's. I'm not saying you necessarily need to agree with him, but I do think it wise to give his view some significant weight.
  • Did you ever consider the possibility that the old guard does know what they're talking about? Or that recently acclaimed "Open Source" accomplishments are not, in fact, that much of an accomplishment [in terms of technical ability/effort/innovation]?

    If that's in response to my post, maybe I miscommunicated something. I thought the tenor of my post would say that while I don't belong to either of the groups I mentioned, I tend to be more sympathetic with the older crowd. From what I've read on computer history, they did some amazing things, and I don't think the (misplaced) arrogance in the newer generation of coders is always warranted.
    --
  • if anything, Linux is a symptom that int-property can't survive the information age. people just can't seem to get it out of their head that int-property just isn't a right - it was a short term "incentive", and all the published trash and all the hollywood hype shows that it wasn't even a good one at that.

    in the 1850s, 2 million Americans died to learn that just because a government calls something a property right, doesn't mean that it is a property right. Looking back we can see that it wasn't about property at all - it was about controll! I wander what it's gonna take for people to learn their lesson this time?

  • "They were all, after all, individuals"

    Didn't edison have a lab full of inventors only to take credit for their inventions?

    Sounds like another pie faced genius I know of.

    bm :)-~

  • ...you just violated the DMCA, i.e. broke a federal law, by circumventing or conspiring to circumvent an access control restriction!

    How does it feel to be a federal criminal?

  • I'm not sure if you're trying to be facetious or not. Though I would call the lack of Open Source's ability the attain/retain qualified people on its projects an economic failing, it is hardly the only flaw I see. It was, however, the one flaw which Joy seemed to be pointing to. Given his rather unique and expert status on the matter, I thought it wise to focus in on that one.

  • Registration (Score:3)

    by sander123 ( 120105 ) on Sunday August 27, 2000 @10:38PM (#823860)
    If you like, you can use this login:

    free-info/slashdot

  • Jim Gray? (Score:5)

    by Shoeboy ( 16224 ) on Sunday August 27, 2000 @10:47PM (#823861) Homepage
    "This issue of open source cuts to the core of the software business," said Jim Gray, a Microsoft researcher and a member of the presidential advisory group. "It is a real challenge, masked by a great deal of hype."
    For those that don't know, Jim Gray is an ex-IBM, ex-DEC database guru who won a Turing Award for his book "Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques" (among other things)
    It's an amazing book (on my desk as we speak) and in it Jim bemoans the fact that DBMS technology has been hampered by the fact that most of the innovation was being done behind closed doors, thereby forcing coders to reinvent the wheel rather than advancing the state of the art.
    So then DEC implodes and Jim Gray goes to work for MS. I seem to recall that he got a 7 digit signing bonus. And now he's describing open source as a "challenge"
    I'm not suprised, but I'm more than a little saddened.
    --Shoeboy
  • Is anyone else just sick and tired of the same old article? "blah Linux blah blah IBM blah RedHat blah blah blah Apache blah Microsoft...."

    The only thing about an article like this that registers above mediocre on the Interesting Scale is the fact that it's better than those MPAA morons who think that "open source" means "steal my life's work."

    Must be a slow news day.
  • "The truth is, great software comes from great programmers, not from a large number of people slaving away," Mr. Joy said. "Open source can be useful. It can speed things up. But it's not new, and it's not holy water."

    I've seen this come up a couple of times before; there seems to be some resentment on the part of the old guard towards a younger, somewhat arrogant crowd who think just because they can slam out an ls frontend with the gtk toolkit that they're wizards(no, of course this doesn't apply to everyone, or even most people) Not meant as a flame, I'm not part of either crowd, just an interested observer.

    Eric S. Raymond, an open-source evangelist, observed that Mr. Torvalds was "the first person who learned how to play by the new rules that pervasive Internet access made possible."

    This is probably one of those statements that irritates the older crowd as well. The internet was founded as a scientific and technological collaboration tool. Linux is the new kid on the block.

    --
  • Aren't we putting a little too much moral importance into this?
    --
  • Even Microsoft, they note, has said recently that its software effort will evolve into a service business.


    I think we need to be wary about Microsoft's idea of a service-based software industry.


    The recent developments at the Microsoft camp (.net and C#) point to a future where application software is served rather than distributed as finished goods. If you want to use Office 2010, you'll have to connect to some server on the internet and run it from there.


    Microsoft is trying to move away from CD-ROM based software. We already don't even own the software on their CDs. The EULA takes away all the rights you normally have when you buy something.

    +++

  • The writer doesn't seem to know which one to use, so he uses them both.

    One mention each for RMS and ESR. No mention of GNU, FSF, and he calls Linux an "experimental unix".

    I do not envy the flames this article is going to receive.

    "Presidential Committee Recommends Research for Open Sores"

  • He seems to be writing 'open-source' when using it as an adjective ("open-source software") but writing "open source" as a noun.

  • Re:Well written, but... (Score:3)

    by himi ( 29186 ) on Sunday August 27, 2000 @11:46PM (#823868) Homepage
    The two marketplace triumphs of open source, after all, are derivative rather than truly innovative.

    A classic piece of FUD the author unfortunately hasn't managed to avoid. The standard reply would be to point to sendmail, for example.

    My guess is that percentage-wise, free and non-free software have about the same amounts of truly innovative stuff.

    Actually, I suspect that percentage wise free software is way out in front . . . In part because innovation in the free software world gets built on very quickly, and also because I think the people working on free software are rather more often the `lone genius' types that _are_ truly innovative.

    Also, I think it's easier to be innovative in the free software world than in the proprietary world - you're scratching an itch, rather than trying to appeal to people, and if you've got an innovative itch you'll probably come up with an innovative solution . . .

    I think BSD is a good example of that: the BSD hackers were scratching their various operating system itches, and came up with something really innovative and amazing. Apache is also a good example - it may have originally been drived from the NCSA webserver, but it's evolved into something vastly different, and vastly more powerful than the NCSA developers would have dreamed of.

    And the way that people like to point at Linux and say "It's just another Unix" is pretty damned silly - Linux _is_ just another Unix, but it's also a platform for doing all sorts of wierd and wonderful things . . . If you want to work on something innovative and different in operating systems these days, you're almost certainly going to start hacking on the Linux kernel, because it's already there, and lets you work on what you want to work on, rather than having to write a whole OS before getting to the interesting stuff . . . So Linus' tree isn't the place to look for the Linux innovation - in fact, you probably won't even see the innovation until it hits you over the head from behind . . .

    Hmmmm . . . I think I've over used `innovation' here . . . ;-)

    himi
    --

  • "Open source" is a noun (well, not exactly, it's a noun phrase or something, but is used as a noun) and "open-source" is an adjective. so it's open-source software and open source as a movement or as source files that you get with your open-source software. very simple. z.
  • Sigh . . .

    Unfortunately, I think it might have become illegal recently. We've passed our own version of that damned DMCA thing recently, so you might be helping me out on my way to gaol . . .

    himi
    --
  • Depends on which side of the fence you are on. I side mainly with RMS, Free Software is better as it preserves and strengthens our freedoms.

    ESR and others argue (badly) that Open Source software is better cos it performs better and has a better development model (all based on dodgy metaphors) and the code is maintained better and bugfixes are more rapid (good evidence for this).

    I take my freedom first, and get the better software thrown in gratis.

    On occasion, pragmatism rears its ugly head, but generally, for me and others, Free Software is a moral issue, tho not for everybody.

  • 40-hour weeks at Microsoft? (Score:4)

    by EricEldred ( 175470 ) on Sunday August 27, 2000 @11:55PM (#823872) Homepage

    I thought the most interesting part of the story was the idea that the project methodology of Free Software (or open source if you like) is becoming recognized as not only a "challenge," but a better way of doing things.

    (The licensing issues of Free Software are not explained well in the article, but it has other virtues.)

    IBM discovered long ago that programming teams don't get the job done faster if you throw more bodies at it. Yet Microsoft and other proprietary software makers really stick to the same old project methodology. In one way or other it is quite similar to the old "waterfall" methodology, with a schedule driven by market needs, and features and bug fixes dropped at the last moment so the buggy release goes out the door.

    Consequently, Microsoft attracts highly-skilled, highly-paid engineers to enlist in these "death march" projects and rewards them with stock options based on performance. No doubt few at MS feel able to work 40-hour weeks.

    But the result is more and more massive software, more and more legacy code to maintain, more and more bugs to fix, more and more releases to fix the bugs, and software never seems to get radically better.

    This is the old "software crisis" of the 1970s, back again with a vengance. Now that Microsoft has gained a monopoly in certain areas, they have little incentive to innovate or find better ways to do things.

    Many of you will argue about this point. But again I say the projects are market-driven by the bosses, not customer-driven. The aim never seems to be delivering code that is elegant or really functional, but only shipping it out the door and charging money later for a release that promises to fix those bugs (and introduces more). And the software gets bigger and bigger, with an idea to include as many functions as possible. The customer more and more relies on the behemoth manufacturer to fix things and customize them and support them, and those jobs aren't being done better now than ever.

    On the other hand, a team of variable size that is distributed over the Internet does seem to work in certain situations. The code it produces is closer to what customers want and need. Even though in many cases it is not finished, it provides enough for a custom programmer to fill in the missing parts. The C and Unix environments have become a lingua franca for professional programmers.

    The eXtreme Programming model does not use teams distributed over the Internet. Instead, it puts the much smaller teams near the customer. Like the open source model, it releases in stages, and it reuses components and other programs well. And it leverages software as a profession. Programmers should not work more than 40 hours a week. Instead, they need to get out of the office, become human beings, relate to their families and societies, and become inspired once again why programming is important, and why it is so important for all of us to do our best job.

    When Microsoft programmers start working 40 hours a week then I know they will have learned something from these new methodologies. But they won't be able to do that unless their bosses learn it first. It might indeed taking a lot of shrinking of the big software factories before this happens.

  • Well written, but... (Score:3)

    by Cardinal Biggles ( 6685 ) on Sunday August 27, 2000 @11:08PM (#823873)

    Well written piece, but I have 2 problems:

    The two marketplace triumphs of open source, after all, are derivative rather than truly innovative.

    A classic piece of FUD the author unfortunately hasn't managed to avoid. The standard reply would be to point to sendmail, for example.

    My guess is that percentage-wise, free and non-free software have about the same amounts of truly innovative stuff.

    There are many kinds of open-source licenses, but they all require contributors who modify an open-source program to make those improvements available to all members of the project.

    Ouch! This is very wrong. BSD-style licenses qualify as open source, but they do not require modifications to be made available.

    Actually, none of the open source licenses require exactly that "contributors who modify an open-source program make those improvements available": this requirement is only made by GPL-style ('viral') licenses only if and when the modifications are redistributed.

  • It is good that MS sees a challenge, maybe they will respond by improving their software.

    Racing Improves the breed.
  • One very interesting thing to note is that the advisory committee recommended Open Source solutions - which goes directly against the US Justice's 'Promis' software it stole from Inslaw. See here [slashdot.org] and here [sonic.net]. The areas the report was recommending - for large scale scientific work is exactly what the Promis software does. I wonder if they'll have any objections? FNORD!

  • gpl (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They included a large portion of the Apache source code in the article. Does that force the article to be distributable under the GPL?

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