Re:Find *what* utterly ridiculous? (Score 1)

This is supposed to be the one of the greatest advantages of open source; if you don't like the way people play, you can pick up the pieces and start your own game.

You're right, but it's also, in my opinion, one of open source's problems and it's kinda frustrating. Excessive versioning and forking dilute projects; the flip side of rich diversity is a lack of critical mass to any one application. As an end-user I don't want to have to do a ton of research to figure out which sub-version of which fork of which application is best. I just want it to work. I don't want to have to deal with two different versions of my IM client. I don't want religious wars over trivial GUI features. I get that choice is good, really I do. But too many choices (especially when forks are made for trivial reasons like this) can be paralyzing and counter productive for both developers and users.

Look at the excessive forking of Linux here. Nerds see this as a good thing. Users see it as confusing and just want to give up. And yes, this problem is not unique to open source. Microsoft made the same mistake with the eight bajillion versions of Vista.