Journal: Why You Just Don't Get It

I ran across this entry about Why Open Source Does Not Work in NoCoward's(648971) journal. I wasn't aware people disliked me enough to bother putting me on a foes list (what's more surprising is I have a fan! Hoorah!). Not to mention that NoCoward has quite a list of foes. I guess he doesn't play well with others.

While the analysis is well written and makes some valid points, it missed the mark for two very important reasons.

• [1] What is his objective? What was the point of him writing this? What does this argument mean to him, and more importantly what message was he trying to convey to his readers?
• [2] He makes a very convincing point that the developers of OpenSource are not the financial benefactors, and instead those that "aftermarket" OSS reap the money. This almost had me, however with some thought I dismissed this when I remembered that
  • [a] who says the developers of OSS aren't also reaping the benefits by being an "aftermarketer". I'm not on the "in", so I may be wrong about this but I would have to guess that those who contributed to OSS could also profit from the "aftermarkets", infact they would be the prime candidates to "cash-in" on the opportunity since these developers know so much about it.
  • [b] why do developers work on OSS right now? something tells me its not for the money.

So in retrospect, the analysis is kind of pointless isn't it? I think NoCoward has missed the point. The whole point of OSS development is that its not profit driven. Hence there's no incentive to "push it out the door" to reclaim ROI. Know how people insist that if you don't like it, then change it? Well OSS gives you that opportunity. More importantly is the philosophy behind it. If you haven't gotten that, then you might as well give up on figuring out why OSS exists at all. It won't matter to you anyway.