RoffleTheWaffle's Journal: Rebel Without A Clue: Musings, Volume One - (01/12/06)

DISCLAIMER -

                Before I continue I would like to say that this entry, if read, should not be considered or misconstrued as any form of professional, intelligent, witty, or even remotely well written publication, and is not to be regarded as a statement of truth, or even a good lie. It is, for all intents and purposes, an argument on behalf of the author, and is as such an opinion and nothing more. Therefore, any failure to comply with and understand the above statements will likely result in a fit or fits of anger, rage, or an otherwise uncharacteristic urge to flame on behalf of the reader. By reading beyond this statement, you, the reader, agree that the author may not be held liable for any physical, mental, or emotional distress on behalf of the reader caused by the reading of this journal entry. You also waive your right to flame the author childishly or attempt to otherwise harass the author in retaliation. Doing so will directly result in you looking very, very silly.

That said, I will now continue with my entry as planned. Enjoy.

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WARRIORS OF A NEW FRONTIER: OPEN SOURCE AND IT'S LACKEYS

                I personally think that the concept of Open Source is a great idea. It was always a great idea, even before it was called Open Source. The concept dates as far back as the time when our forefathers in computing were geeky university kids playing around with Altairs in their little 'Homebrew Computing' clubs, trying to discover how to get them to perform basic addition problems such as two-plus-two or make music via radio interference. It is, in the truest sense, the real and true nature of computing, and embodies an important underlying concept, which would be the advancement of technology and our collective knowledge through sharing and collaboration. It therefore comes as a surprise to me that the members of the movement behind the Open Source ideal time and again demonstrate such laughable stupidity. I'm not talking about the heads of the movement, the Commanders and Generals of the Open Source army. I'm talking about the foot soldiers, the little people that make up the foundation of the movement. They, like so many other folks, tend to generally get on my nerves.

        During my final year of high school wherein I attended two year-long courses provided by Cisco Systems - a general Information Technology course and a Networking course - I was met with the displeasure of having to attend class with two such footmen of the proud and dumpy masses behind the Open Source cause. These two characters were in themselves real pieces of work, and I can't help but think sometimes that their desire to contribute to the greater good of Open Source may have originated from the deeper desire to simply belong to something greater than they themselves were or considered themselves to be. Their names were Tim and John, who quickly and rightfully earned themselves the nicknames 'Swampdonkey' and 'Linuxboy', respectively. Tim was a portly young man with curly, greasy black hair and perpetual acne, and John was a tall, scrawny blone with glasses who bore a remarkable resemblance to an older version of Ralph from 'A Christmas Story'. While they weren't bad people, per se, together they were the very incarnations of overblown nerdiness, neatly packed into two little overzealous and nervewracking packages. I knew upon meeting them that the coming semesters in those classes would surely be hell.

        While remarkably similar in their motives, points of view, and behaviors, these two differed fundamentally, and by the end of the year had grown in two separate directions, both deeply influenced by their extended and extensive exposure to computers and the world of computer technology and software. Tim, surprisingly enough, matured a great deal and perhaps even began bathing on a regular basis. (At the beginning of the year, he could easily clear the lab room with his overwhelming odor, hence his nickname.) John, however, slid deeper into the trenches of his nerdy zeal, and failed to adopt a deeper understanding of the concepts behind technological advancement. (In fact, his absolute obsession with Linux only got worse and more glaringly obvious than before, which I thought was impossible.) They became perfect examples of the two distinct classes of soldier that appear among the ranks of the Open Source army.

        We have the zealous infantryman - portrayed by John - to whom anything branded with the words 'Open Source' or 'Linux' was instantaneously superior, and all corporate influence in the world of computing that didn't support the Open Source movement was evil. Then we have the calmer, much more collected and understanding sharpshooter - John - who knows how to pick his battles and his targets, and has a deeper understanding of the computing world. To reiterate, the infantryman charges into battle swinging wildly, chanting his army's battlecry over the voice of his fellow zealots as he proceeds toward what is likely certain doom. The sharpshooter, however, is calculating, efficient, precise, and knows his enemy so that his shots may always count. He keeps behind the battle lines, avoiding direct conflict while remaining in active combat.

        In the computing world, especially in the realm of the Internet, the battles fought by this army are often fought on the battlefields of forums and chatrooms. They are debates and flamewars, wrought against the opposing armies of the proprietary horde, which is headed by Microsoft. While it would seem I'm departing far from the topic of my former classmates, these observations in fact have everything to do with them. This is what I have learned from them and hundreds of other people like them, and these are the lives they lived, at least online and in the classroom. I also was able to achieve eerie insights into their personal lives and their psyche, telling me perhaps more than I ever desired to know about these two. This is the nature of these two soldiers and the army to which they belong: that supposedly quiet, underground movement that is anything but. They embody typical archetypes, you see, and if I could refer to them as such, I would consider them living specimens - samples - of the Open Source culture.

        While I could arguably continue on about my experiences with these two for days on end, I will do my best to condense my experiences with them for now. When I met both of them, they were lacking in their overall knowledge of computers, as was I. They both had the blood of rebels running in their veins - I could see it right away, and almost sense this radiant aura of disdain for the establishment - and a deep thirst for knowledge. They were steadfast in their beliefs, and yet they had little to no knowledge of just what they stood for, not unlike the modern sheep of the punk trend present in our society today. (Unfortunately, thank you very much MTV.)

        We on several occasions clashed about our views of technological progression and modern computing. While I agree with the Open Source concept and ideal, as I said before, I didn't agree with their attitudes on the topic, and I do believe, unlike they do, that the Open Source movement today is very incomplete, and is being widely and unfairly exploited. (Of course, that's a whole other kettle of fish for another time, perhaps later in this entry.) Tim, like John, believed in the greater good of Open Source. However, he soon realized that while there were cracks forming in Microsoft's Win-Tel dam, indicating that it soon may no longer be able to restrict the flow of knowledge, technology, and innovation through the world as it has in the past, the Open Source movement has yet to complete it's own reservoirs for tapping into the entropy of the computing world and using it to trap and keep it's own fill of the ichor of knowledge that it collectively desires. Meanwhile, as we have all seen and suspect, other dams are being built to stem the coming flood, and use it to their own advantage solely. John, on the other hand, obviously and naively felt that the Open Source logjam is more than enough to contain this flood alone. It was perfect, in his eyes, and always was and will always be - perfect and complete in every way. That boy just didn't learn.

THE LOGJAM: IF IT AIN'T BROKE, FIX IT ANYWAY -

        So what was the problem? It's okay for people to have ideals, dreams, and ambitions. Tim and John had ambitions, and that was fine. The differences between the two of them manifested themselves most visibly in their final attitudes about Open Source at the time I finally left the class at the end of the year. Tim had grown out of that immature 'Linux will take over the world!' phase, while John was still shrieking the very same mantra ad nauseum. This is where the error of the majority of the supporters of the Open Source movement - or at least the most visible majority - becomes clear, just as John's error became that much more glaringly obvious as Tim rectified his.

        The Open Source movement at large, in my eyes, suffers from a profound lack of common sense. This combined with all the passion and drive of a hippie commune has resulted in what I see as a startling lack of organization and professionalism in the Open Source world. That's not to say that Open Source communities can't turn out good programs or do it themselves, but it seems almost as though the vast majority of truly good programs turned out by the Open Source community were created with some kind of outside aid or with the help of corporate dollars. Only when Open Source communities behave like businesses do they ever get anything truly good done quickly, which may or may not be a good thing. It leads me to wonder what kind of a future the Open Source movement has, and whether or not it's healthy for the movement itself to proceed as it has in the past. I also can't help but question the motives of some of Open Sources biggest corporate allies, namely Google and IBM. (But once again, whole other kettle of fish.)

        The biggest problem I see is that the vast majority of people who rant and rave about how much they adore the Open Source ideal haven't a single clue what they're talking about. They're protoypical zealots, just as Tim and John were when I first met them. Often young, childish, but enthusiastic, they make good poster children for the cause, but contribute little else. Then you have more seasoned zealots, who have lost their charm and replaced it with yet more steadfast devotion, like jubilant young choir boys growing up to be silent old monks in a monestary. It wouldn't kill them to actually begin to independently learn how to do things such as code or at least modify applications, but for one reason or another, they don't. Parasitic of their communities, they place the burden of coding on the backs of the much more skilled minority of developers therein.

        Meanwhile, it would appear that these same developers have trouble pooling their resources and creating schedules and timetables, which is also a bit disappointing. I realize that these are communities, yes, but were they run more like volunteer software studios with part-time positions, they could become much more productive and much more disciplined. These programs simply advance on the classic Duke Nukem 4-Ever schedule - 'When it's done.' - and lack an extensively organized web of developers, but are beta-tester heavy by far. (To return to the subject of my classmates briefly, Tim seemed to escape his 'parasitic stage' and seems to have a great interest in learning to program. John can barely install an OS.)

        Aside from their lack of organization and discipline, most of these communities give themselves a very bad image. (Fortunately, this image has been cleaned up a bit recently.) Frankly, I'm not interested in helping what would appear to be an online bastion of radical leftism develop software, much less receive technical support from them or discuss anything of importance with them. These zealots - the people like John - are like some kind of plague. I almost can't stand listening to them or reading what they write, because it's all so overly idealistic. Once again, ideals aren't bad, but when they're so unrealistic and downright stupid that you can't help but laugh and cringe at the same time, and they're made so vocal and repeated so often, they become more than an annoyance. They become repulsive. (This could be equated to deriving humor from seeing someone being kicked in the gonads repeatedly. It's funny at first, but then you really begin to feel the poor man's pain and just walk away...)

        I'm sorry, but ambition is no replacement for discipline, and the Open Source community - this amorphous blob of mindshare and potential that almost refuses to coalesce upon itself into a working, unified structure - has suffered as a direct result. Now the grinning, corpulent vultures of the coporate world loom above, waiting to pick away at yet more of this mass, which is something I find truly despicable. If Open Source isn't strangled to death by the sinister will of the proprietary horde, which has in fact - all sensationalism aside - shown a very strong interest in recent times in destroying the Open Source movement with new laws and technologies, it will find itself caught under a snare and at the mercy of their Big Brothers in business, whom will be the only source of support the movement will have available.

        I don't believe in armchair activism. Most grassroots movements leave a really foul taste in my mouth. I see a lot of the Open Source crowd as being an army of armchair activists, preaching about change but doing nothing to bring it about. All talk, no walk - this summarizes the average Open Source zealot nicely. They, like myself, are often much more skilled at writing elaborate pep-talks and conveying their dreamlike visions of a future where Open Source software runs on every device there is to be had, but when it comes to really taking action, be it through coding or attempting to actively spread the word in their own townships, they fail miserably. This is why armchair activism and grassroots movements usually don't seem to get a lot done. All talk, no walk.

        It just looks to me like the problem here is that the Open Source movement is treating it's little logjam like the Hoover Dam, when it needs a Hoover Dam and has just a logjam. This logjam could easily become everything the Open Source movement needs, if these communities began running themselves more like businesses - sans the profit part - and less like Woodstock. The Open Source movement has incredible potential, but is lacking so much and at such a crucial time. The Win-Tel dam is about to burst. The big conglomerates are starting to sweat. We don't just need thinkers, we need people who can either stand up and rally support for the cause or sit down and turn out some kickass code, preferrably both. We need those people right now before the dam really does break and the Open Source logjam winds up being swept away by the flood.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN OPEN SOURCE: THE VULTURES OF MOUNTAIN VIEW -

(Coming soon. This entry will be updated to reflect additions and edits made to it, and in order to add coming 'chapters'.)