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I'm some ways, I get your analogy, but I think you're making an assumption that it doesn't support. Open source software is rarely "here's a free chair, that a
by qchris 6y ago
I'm some ways, I get your analogy, but I think you're making an assumption that it doesn't support.
Open source software is rarely "here's a free chair, that also doesn't have splinters." It's far more often "Here are some free blanks for a chair I made. It's not totally finished, so you'll probably need to do some work on it yourself. But the joints are easy to dis/re-assemble, so feel free to examine it all and modify or replace them to meet your needs. Also, don't sue me."
In that context, it's much more understandable, not because anyone's wrong per se, but because fundamentally the expectations are mismatched.
- visiblink 6y agoI would take issue with "far more often." I guess that's true if you're searching out software on Github or the equivalent. If you're installing packages from your distribution's repository, there are tens of thousands of finished free software products (inasmuch as any software, open or proprietary, is ever finished).
- qchris 6y agoBut tens of thousands of finished-ish products is a drop in the bucket compared to the total scale of FOSS software through Github/Gitlab. For GPL alone, a quick license search on Github reveals almost 2M individual repositories with that license. I'd wager that it's unlikely a majority of those would meet an include-in-a-distro's-package-manager level of polish.
- visiblink 6y agoI agree with your math and your assessment of what's available at Github and the like. Perhaps part of the problem is that people (including many developers) treat git repositories as app stores. It seems unfair to complain that you're getting rough products when you're snatching them off the factory floor -- or out of the design room.
- detaro 6y agoBut the tweet is just pointing out that mismatch, not really blaming anyone for it?