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I think of open source as the tech equivalent of public education ( and public infrastructure, like roads). The world will be truly worse off without it --unima

I think of open source as the tech equivalent of public education ( and public infrastructure, like roads). The world will be truly worse off without it --unimaginably so. But it is total garbage when compared to the Ivies. So, education is neither an achievement nor really goal for any of the Ivies; I guess people feel the anguish when they imagine an open source university on par with Harvard, and blamimg Imperial decline feels as good as picking the scabs Anyways its because i just had a thought like Orwells -- the right thing to do is to have the prestige of Harvard without any of the fame

kalimanzaro 4y ago
( to be sure, i mean FOSS anything else rather than OSes. I think Windows and Solaris were just unbelievably unlucky -- or something about prestige?) Or- maybe open source isnt really the achievement here.. after all finland is and was the borderlands of the west. Rather, Linus laid unassailable foundations for the ultimate OS and he kept it FO, like a real life Hari Seldon
- cassianoleal 4y ago
  Just to be clear, you're saying that with the exception of OSs, open source is always worse than a proprietary alternative? Tell me a single proprietary web server and reverse proxy out there that beats Nginx, Traefik, HAproxy, etc. What about databases? Is Oracle, or B2, measurably better than MySQL, PostgreSQL? Let's go down to a personal anecdote. The other day I was sent a DOCX with a form to fill out. I tried it on Office365's Word. Some of the form fields I couldn't change to the correct answer. I opened the same file on LibreOffice and voilà, in 10 minutes I had filled out and sent the form. Now, you talked about Linus... What about git? What proprietary SCM software is better than it? Browsers. Is Edge better than Chrome or Firefox? Was Internet Explorer? Is Safari? I could go on... Edit: s/OpenOffice/LibreOffice/
  - kalimanzaro 4y ago
    aha my terrible hypothesis masquerading as an informed opinion back there. You are right, mostly-- I can' t agree about libreoffice but I can be entitled to the opinion that it is clunkier that the msoft version cant I? Here is a revamped hypothesis for your approval: FOSS is almost always better except possibly when comparing UX heavy software, and thats only because "quality of UX" is largely a subjective measure.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  > Hari Seldon hah - thx for this ref "The two prequels—Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation—describe Seldon's life in considerable detail. "
indigochill 4y ago
> But it is total garbage when compared to the Ivies. Well, the Ivies hold more status and better social connections because they're where the people in power went, but I'm not convinced that means the actual quality of education necessarily has to be worse. I for instance went to a public university which is commonly hailed as the world's best university (or "one of the best" depending who you ask...) for journalism. The closest Ivy competitor is maybe Columbia or Brown. Admittedly the electives were garbage, but the journalism education really was top-notch.

kalimanzaro 4y ago

( to be sure, i mean FOSS anything else rather than OSes. I think Windows and Solaris were just unbelievably unlucky -- or something about prestige?) Or- maybe open source isnt really the achievement here.. after all finland is and was the borderlands of the west. Rather, Linus laid unassailable foundations for the ultimate OS and he kept it FO, like a real life Hari Seldon

cassianoleal 4y ago
Just to be clear, you're saying that with the exception of OSs, open source is always worse than a proprietary alternative? Tell me a single proprietary web server and reverse proxy out there that beats Nginx, Traefik, HAproxy, etc. What about databases? Is Oracle, or B2, measurably better than MySQL, PostgreSQL? Let's go down to a personal anecdote. The other day I was sent a DOCX with a form to fill out. I tried it on Office365's Word. Some of the form fields I couldn't change to the correct answer. I opened the same file on LibreOffice and voilà, in 10 minutes I had filled out and sent the form. Now, you talked about Linus... What about git? What proprietary SCM software is better than it? Browsers. Is Edge better than Chrome or Firefox? Was Internet Explorer? Is Safari? I could go on... Edit: s/OpenOffice/LibreOffice/
- kalimanzaro 4y ago
  aha my terrible hypothesis masquerading as an informed opinion back there. You are right, mostly-- I can' t agree about libreoffice but I can be entitled to the opinion that it is clunkier that the msoft version cant I? Here is a revamped hypothesis for your approval: FOSS is almost always better except possibly when comparing UX heavy software, and thats only because "quality of UX" is largely a subjective measure.
mistrial9 4y ago
> Hari Seldon hah - thx for this ref "The two prequels—Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation—describe Seldon's life in considerable detail. "

indigochill 4y ago

> But it is total garbage when compared to the Ivies. Well, the Ivies hold more status and better social connections because they're where the people in power went, but I'm not convinced that means the actual quality of education necessarily has to be worse. I for instance went to a public university which is commonly hailed as the world's best university (or "one of the best" depending who you ask...) for journalism. The closest Ivy competitor is maybe Columbia or Brown. Admittedly the electives were garbage, but the journalism education really was top-notch.