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Last post Author Topic: Sign of the times for OpenSource software?  (Read 22536 times)

tomos

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Re: Sign of the times for OpenSource software?
« Reply #50 on: November 11, 2012, 02:48 PM »
Yeah, yeah.... Let's just go make fun of Renegade because he posts drunk all the time and makes stupid mistakes/typos~! :P ;D

This time around, I'm blaming some pretty damn good Australian wine! :D
I'll make fun of you for drinking aussie wines - but as long as you're staying away from french, we can still be friends :P

f0dder,  I notice you've got a bit of a chip on your shoulder with regard to things French.
Have you been treated bad by a (now ex) french girlfriend at some stage, or something :P
Tom

Paul Keith

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Re: Sign of the times for OpenSource software?
« Reply #51 on: November 14, 2012, 02:33 PM »
I don't really think it's a corporatist nor capitalist issue. FOSS is a rep for the communist utopian by-product in a vacuum.

I don't mean to use communism as a bad label but more like, thanks to software's role and model, all the horrible stuff about resources that befalls communism is removed and all the strength of communism shows: wide availability, eternal backups, initial fad bazaars, allowance for a business model possible thus giving the illusion that capitalism can be dropped/minimalized (when in socialism).

This is as close as it is to it's ideal form but this is what happens when you don't suck people dry. The proverbial common missing shoe that both socialist and communist don't realize is the subtle long term reason why despite all it's good, something that doesn't suck things to be dried will always stagnate when it comes time to do more than just start/continue a project in stable times. I consider it the phenomena of "the people with houses are ones who end up rarely maximizing the space for those houses" phenomena because the security/perceived current stability of the house makes for a good justification why enough is enough and only trinkets like wallpapers or furnitures need to be modified until times of constant disasters where the recreation of multiple geo-/politico-/type of emergency bunkers is more important than the recreation of similar houses.

Not sucking things dry goes both ways. Yes, you don't overwork people but the society/culture doesn't feel like training people too. What happens is both copycat mentality at it's strongest for a competitive already released product but there's no desire by the same fans to ensure you're sucking dry the passion to train a future improver with a specific target for your specific app other than volunteers maintaining a software and when you go that route, there can only be enough symbols for the people to rally behind on without the hierarchy falling back down to popular gets most attention/a savant saviour eventually adding something that is in long need of due being a justification for why the system work/is better than the failures of capitalism and everything else below that tier is "mass psychologically" treating everyone (end users/devs/volunteers) to perceive the product as the "penultimate" finished product at it's best times that is good for now and on pace for the future and one that can be slowly worked on and barely needs improvements over other software because of the chance of breaking something else.

As a basic example as to why I disagree that in comes down to basic resources of time and money, many peak open source projects garner fans that are hostile towards a passionate introduction for new features when time and money are at a high and in many mass FOSS projects, the project fosters a religious identity of "people who already have or may have the skills" working together voluntarily. In an ideal free capitalist system, this wouldn't work. Businesses fall apart so often that makers understand the necessity of training beyond the mere recruiting of skilled workers. Free/cheap stuff that needs to be improved require more and more manpower but lack more and more "properly synchronized with school graduates" that in-house training and external contracts is so much a desperate need that in the worse of times, something unforeseen, like the need to hire a maid to clean your office or to ensure marketing your spot as a regular place for work even cheap menial work becomes just as much part of the software maintenance project as the nitty gritty of the actual software that the awareness is different and the direction becomes more specific beyond specific.

Even in it's most basic corporate structure, an employer in a corporate state would want to ensure his reputation for his next job/or so that his legacy would be remembered for the safe being of his family which is something a total fascist state or a socialist prepared for a communist era would rarely care about beyond the basic small standard of being seen as a good person and the byproduct of that is something like software would rarely be on the list of things that a developer would want to "leave behind in good hands" compared to an executive job or their family or the software that made their names on par with a Linus.