maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - Just an observation

mwiktowy	2007-02-26 , 23:32
Posts: 373 \| Thanked: 56 times \| Joined on Dec 2005 @ Ottawa, ON	#28

Originally Posted by sapporobaby

After switching to Mac and then purchasing the N800, I have become aware for the "Open Source" movement. My initial observations and experience gave me a feeling of hope and euphoria. This quickly faded as more and more I came across half written projects, started but not finished projects, projects that seemed to be only written for developers, basically bad applications. While I am no fan of Microsoft, I have to agree that the "Open Source" communities that I see are a hodge-podge of hopes and promises with little or no substance behind it. Yes, my Mac uses FREE BSD but the commercial version was produced by Apple in a controlled environment with the goal of developing a commercial working product that people would pay for. It also appears that many in the "Open Source" community seem to have an anti-establishment mentality where making a buck off of a good product is bad. If someone were to come up with a great sycning application for the N800, I would gladly pay for it. GAIM is not bad and I would consider paying for it as well if it had a bit better functionality. All in all I can appreciate much of the work done in the community but it seems to have no structure or no real zeal to finish things. I guess, I am old school in that I believe in finishing what you start.

You are correct that this unfinishedness is more visible in the open source world. I would argue that due to the nature of open source necessitating everything being open and visible to anyone, everyone gets to see all the guts and messy bits. Sometimes the well polished diamonds and the money making finished products get lost to those new to the community. I agree that this openness turns a lot of people off just like seeing the inside of a sausage factory would turn off a lot of sausage eaters. It doesn't mean that most sausages aren't tasty though and it doesn't mean that most open source software is half done and broken.

Apple took an open source infrastructure and put on a glossy finish for a limited subset of hardware and marketed the hell out of it and hid all the nasty bits from the end-user. Apple is the Oscar Mayer of the computing world. Open source infrastructure is the meat grinder. I hesitate to speculate where Microsoft fits into this analogy for fear of wandering into troll territory :]

There are other sausage vendors out there, they just don't have the marketing money to promote themselves but they are probably tastier.