7 ms·

It sounds like this guy has some sort of axe to grind, but he's wrong. His argument rests on the claim that "most open source code is poor or unusable." When m

by ohazi 7y ago

It sounds like this guy has some sort of axe to grind, but he's wrong. His argument rests on the claim that "most open source code is poor or unusable." When most people refer to Open Source Software, they're referring to serious projects like the Linux kernel, Apache, PostreSQL, Firefox, etc. They're not referring to random crap on Github. The serious projects are actually better than their closed-source counterparts, both in quality, and in their ability to be extended and customized. Customization is not going to be cheap or easy, but it will at least be possible. The fact that I wrote a toy renderer in Rust five years ago and haven't touched it since then doesn't change this. The fact that there are 100 or 1000 times as many toy projects as there are serious projects doesn't change this either.

ThrowawayR2 7y ago
Ironically, he anticipated this objection, which many people beyond the parent poster are making, and answered it in the paragraph that contains: "... Open source users will admit that a lot of open source is buggy abandonware. However they argue that this really does not matter since some small significant fraction is really quite good and that's the stuff we should use. ..." Finding and dissecting the paragraph that contains the above sentence is left as an exercise to the reader.
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  As far as I can tell, he makes a weak argument by analogy > This lesser-known fact is masked by the isolated points fallacy. The isolated points fallacy consists in taking the high scoring points on a graph and plotting your line on the basis of them. Hence open source champions wheel out the standard examples of success - Open Office, Wordpress and Red Hat Linux (we'll look at why some of these have succeeded later) - ignoring the vast sea of floating half submerged buggy and abandoned projects (over 120,000) that litter Github. It is the sort of technique Mugabe would have used for TV. If you're accused of starving the country, wheel out a handful of well nourished kids for people to see. 'Look, our country is fine; see how healthy these kids are'. Out in the slums the less fortunate die of cholera.
  - drongoking 7y ago
    I don't buy his argument and I think he's confused. Lots of people have released code on github (as have I) so that other people can use it. Lots of it isn't used, so it looks abandoned. Maybe it is. So what? Why is that considered a failure of Open Source? I think he's applying closed source's rules. A closed source project is a failure if no one uses (ie, buys) it, since it represents a development cost that wasn't compensated. Not so with open source. I don't suffer if no one uses my project, and the existence of my repositories doesn't detract from anyone else's work.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      I agree. When I first started programming I put a program close to hello world on Github. I suppose that's counted as abandoned? Also, I'm sure everyone's seen a closed source project that went nowhere?
      - zzo38computer 7y ago
        A closed source project that went nowhere is less likely to be seen, as it often isn't released somewhere, I think.
        iudqnolq 7y ago
        I agree completely. I meant I expect many people have watched closed source projects die before they're released or be abandoned after release, but that is harder to measure in aggregate because it's much less likely to be seen. So the author is wrong to compare all software on Github to closed source software he's heard about. Those "measurements" are completely different.
      - mntmoss 7y ago
        His point remains reasonable, though: If all you did was dump the resulting artifacts of a learning or self-edification exercise online, you didn't make a product like a Firefox or MySQL. And to the extent that people use your code, it's most likely as part of a similar journey to yours, and studying that code is not hugely different from studying books and whitepapers, even if the code is easier to leverage. But people were doing this before "open source" became a thing, and in a manner more befitting the role of such code: as part of a text file documenting the core concepts and posted on a BBS or Usenet, so that you could program the same thing. It's the kind of thing that would be a blogpost now. The actual code? Usually only the really deep, underlying algorithms need that spelled out. It's only when you make a full system that the end user can get value out of that you get into the scenario he outlines. Somewhere in the middle in between the simple code dump and Firefox, open source tends to sink into a quagmire where it looks like a product but it's not supported like a product. And the only good answers then seem to be "go small" (impose LOC limits and hard constraints on features you ship so that maintenance drifts towards stability) or "commoditize" (become part of someone's product in a way that gets you paid).
yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
> most open source code is poor or unusable Is there any special reason to believe that closed source is any better? If we can count the sea of abandonware on Github, then we get to count the mountain of "interesting" code that remains internal to large companies, or worse, the stuff that actually got released on unsuspecting customers.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  Generally, a business pays developers to write software that it expects to be put to immediate use, which means that most of the time it functions, at least minimally. I'm sure exceptions exist, of course. FLOSS abandonware has no such constraint.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Generally, expectations do not define reality. I'm not just being contrary, I've worked on a project for a year or two that got scrapped, and I think it happens a lot. Another way to look at it, is that if you have programmers that are regular employees and not temps or something, you might as well have them work on something that's not very important, or that's risky, when you don't have something better for them to do, because you're paying them anyway.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - codyb 7y ago
      I’m convinced if they stopped paying us all to rewrite things that work the market would fall out from under us. Every job I’ve ever been involved with has always had some code base that was in framework X and now needs to be in framework Y, or on in house hardware and needs to move to the cloud, etc etc. And having just interviewed every place has a project like that. “We were using PHP for the mvp but are moving to RoR”, “We were using class based react but now we’re using hooks”, etc etc. I feel half of it is valuable migrations and half of it is to always have something on our plates. And it always has to get done yesterday. What a world.
zzo38computer 7y ago
Those things I agree with it. The good open-source programs mostly are better than other programs in these ways. Yes there will be many badly written programs (I think someone said that 90% of anything will be not very good), but there is good stuff too. I think it may be the case even with the closed sources, but in that case they are unavailable so we will not have any statistics about it.
- kwhitefoot 7y ago
  > 90% of anything will be not very good), Theodore Sturgeon is usually credited with it but he was a little less polite and rather more definite, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
hodgesrm 7y ago
The author is wrong on innovation as well usability. One of his arguments is summarized as follows: > [Open source] did not reward innovation. The most successful products of open source are knockoffs of old ideas; Linux included. So what about Spark? What about Python numpy, pandas, and scikit-learn? Most people don't just use them because they are open source. They are innovative solutions to difficult problems.
teh_klev 7y ago
> The fact that I wrote a toy renderer in Rust five years ago and haven't touched it since then doesn't change this. I ask you in good faith...if you pushed this to a public github repo that was your reasoning? If it was something I found to be of value and you'd LICENSE'd it under a promiscuous license and I took that code and made a few million dollars from your idea (and kept all the money), would you be happy with that? Was this just a thing to show potential employers you can code and use git, how does an employer even know actually you wrote that code? > they're referring to serious projects like the Linux kernel, Apache, PostreSQL, Firefox, etc. I feel you're missing the point here, not all the contributors to these projects are getting paid for their efforts. See his point about Linux Torvalds comment about: This model of using people was acknowledged right from the beginning with a sly wink to Linus Torvalds from Eric S. Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Eric S. Raymond: "In fact, I think Linus’s cleverest and most consequential hack was not the construction of the Linux kernel itself, but rather his invention of the Linux development model. When I expressed this opinion in his presence once, he smiled and quietly repeated something he has often said: “I’m basically a very lazy person who likes to get credit for things other people actually do."

by ohazi 7y ago

ThrowawayR2 7y ago

Ironically, he anticipated this objection, which many people beyond the parent poster are making, and answered it in the paragraph that contains: "... Open source users will admit that a lot of open source is buggy abandonware. However they argue that this really does not matter since some small significant fraction is really quite good and that's the stuff we should use. ..." Finding and dissecting the paragraph that contains the above sentence is left as an exercise to the reader.

iudqnolq 7y ago
As far as I can tell, he makes a weak argument by analogy > This lesser-known fact is masked by the isolated points fallacy. The isolated points fallacy consists in taking the high scoring points on a graph and plotting your line on the basis of them. Hence open source champions wheel out the standard examples of success - Open Office, Wordpress and Red Hat Linux (we'll look at why some of these have succeeded later) - ignoring the vast sea of floating half submerged buggy and abandoned projects (over 120,000) that litter Github. It is the sort of technique Mugabe would have used for TV. If you're accused of starving the country, wheel out a handful of well nourished kids for people to see. 'Look, our country is fine; see how healthy these kids are'. Out in the slums the less fortunate die of cholera.
- drongoking 7y ago
  I don't buy his argument and I think he's confused. Lots of people have released code on github (as have I) so that other people can use it. Lots of it isn't used, so it looks abandoned. Maybe it is. So what? Why is that considered a failure of Open Source? I think he's applying closed source's rules. A closed source project is a failure if no one uses (ie, buys) it, since it represents a development cost that wasn't compensated. Not so with open source. I don't suffer if no one uses my project, and the existence of my repositories doesn't detract from anyone else's work.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    I agree. When I first started programming I put a program close to hello world on Github. I suppose that's counted as abandoned? Also, I'm sure everyone's seen a closed source project that went nowhere?
    - zzo38computer 7y ago
      A closed source project that went nowhere is less likely to be seen, as it often isn't released somewhere, I think.
      - iudqnolq 7y ago
        I agree completely. I meant I expect many people have watched closed source projects die before they're released or be abandoned after release, but that is harder to measure in aggregate because it's much less likely to be seen. So the author is wrong to compare all software on Github to closed source software he's heard about. Those "measurements" are completely different.
    - mntmoss 7y ago
      His point remains reasonable, though: If all you did was dump the resulting artifacts of a learning or self-edification exercise online, you didn't make a product like a Firefox or MySQL. And to the extent that people use your code, it's most likely as part of a similar journey to yours, and studying that code is not hugely different from studying books and whitepapers, even if the code is easier to leverage. But people were doing this before "open source" became a thing, and in a manner more befitting the role of such code: as part of a text file documenting the core concepts and posted on a BBS or Usenet, so that you could program the same thing. It's the kind of thing that would be a blogpost now. The actual code? Usually only the really deep, underlying algorithms need that spelled out. It's only when you make a full system that the end user can get value out of that you get into the scenario he outlines. Somewhere in the middle in between the simple code dump and Firefox, open source tends to sink into a quagmire where it looks like a product but it's not supported like a product. And the only good answers then seem to be "go small" (impose LOC limits and hard constraints on features you ship so that maintenance drifts towards stability) or "commoditize" (become part of someone's product in a way that gets you paid).

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago

> most open source code is poor or unusable Is there any special reason to believe that closed source is any better? If we can count the sea of abandonware on Github, then we get to count the mountain of "interesting" code that remains internal to large companies, or worse, the stuff that actually got released on unsuspecting customers.

ThrowawayR2 7y ago
Generally, a business pays developers to write software that it expects to be put to immediate use, which means that most of the time it functions, at least minimally. I'm sure exceptions exist, of course. FLOSS abandonware has no such constraint.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  Generally, expectations do not define reality. I'm not just being contrary, I've worked on a project for a year or two that got scrapped, and I think it happens a lot. Another way to look at it, is that if you have programmers that are regular employees and not temps or something, you might as well have them work on something that's not very important, or that's risky, when you don't have something better for them to do, because you're paying them anyway.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - codyb 7y ago
    I’m convinced if they stopped paying us all to rewrite things that work the market would fall out from under us. Every job I’ve ever been involved with has always had some code base that was in framework X and now needs to be in framework Y, or on in house hardware and needs to move to the cloud, etc etc. And having just interviewed every place has a project like that. “We were using PHP for the mvp but are moving to RoR”, “We were using class based react but now we’re using hooks”, etc etc. I feel half of it is valuable migrations and half of it is to always have something on our plates. And it always has to get done yesterday. What a world.

zzo38computer 7y ago

Those things I agree with it. The good open-source programs mostly are better than other programs in these ways. Yes there will be many badly written programs (I think someone said that 90% of anything will be not very good), but there is good stuff too. I think it may be the case even with the closed sources, but in that case they are unavailable so we will not have any statistics about it.

kwhitefoot 7y ago
> 90% of anything will be not very good), Theodore Sturgeon is usually credited with it but he was a little less polite and rather more definite, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

hodgesrm 7y ago

The author is wrong on innovation as well usability. One of his arguments is summarized as follows: > [Open source] did not reward innovation. The most successful products of open source are knockoffs of old ideas; Linux included. So what about Spark? What about Python numpy, pandas, and scikit-learn? Most people don't just use them because they are open source. They are innovative solutions to difficult problems.

teh_klev 7y ago

> The fact that I wrote a toy renderer in Rust five years ago and haven't touched it since then doesn't change this. I ask you in good faith...if you pushed this to a public github repo that was your reasoning? If it was something I found to be of value and you'd LICENSE'd it under a promiscuous license and I took that code and made a few million dollars from your idea (and kept all the money), would you be happy with that? Was this just a thing to show potential employers you can code and use git, how does an employer even know actually you wrote that code? > they're referring to serious projects like the Linux kernel, Apache, PostreSQL, Firefox, etc. I feel you're missing the point here, not all the contributors to these projects are getting paid for their efforts. See his point about Linux Torvalds comment about: This model of using people was acknowledged right from the beginning with a sly wink to Linus Torvalds from Eric S. Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Eric S. Raymond: "In fact, I think Linus’s cleverest and most consequential hack was not the construction of the Linux kernel itself, but rather his invention of the Linux development model. When I expressed this opinion in his presence once, he smiled and quietly repeated something he has often said: “I’m basically a very lazy person who likes to get credit for things other people actually do."