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Sorry, I didn't mean to attack you or anything. I'm just praising the model and abilities of open-source and how much power it gives to the user. I'm extending

by shurane 14y ago

Sorry, I didn't mean to attack you or anything. I'm just praising the model and abilities of open-source and how much power it gives to the user. I'm extending this idea of rolling your own code to anything/everything open-source, not just text editors. If you're playing a game, or using a webapp and there's some feature or pain point you want to add... well now writing it yourself is an option! Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you have to write it because you have a thousand other things to focus on or that the reward/effort ratio isn't worthwhile or whatever reason. But you can. But you can't tell me that having the option to do so isn't so freaking awesome. Would you prefer abandonware instead? Or seeing where Textmate 2 was going (evidently, nowhere) if it wasn't open-sourced?

batista 14y ago
>Sorry, I didn't mean to attack you or anything. Oh, no problem, I didn't get that impression. >I'm just praising the model and abilities of open-source and how much power it gives to the user. Well, what I'm tried to say it that much of this is "potential" power and not actual. It takes a community or at least several interested programmers to actualise it. Else, it's just the same as if the user didn't have the option at all. >But you can't tell me that having the option to do so isn't so freaking awesome. Would you prefer abandonware instead? No, sure, Open Source is better than closed source abandon-ware. Only pointing it that open source can be abandon-ware too (tons of abandoned projects on SourceForge and GitHub -- and not all for lack of interested users, mainly for lack of interested programmers).
- shurane 14y ago
  Personally, I think that everyone should have some form of programming chops. If only so people can program in the features that they want/need into the software they use. That's why I think programmers as users (that can contribute back!) are so beneficial. Heck, they can even help the lead programmer debug by finding stack traces, culprit lines in code, working on things the author can't make time for, etc. etc. You're right in that it's "potential" power, but I think it's just a matter of time of getting more people into the open-source and contributing mindset. I don't think enough of my coworkers or previous peers from uni respect the power of open-source. They just see open-source software as something... 'fixed'. It's either good, or not. They don't realize that they can easily change it with some determination. On a sidenote, have you read about the "Cathedral and the Bazaar" [1], by Eric S. Raymond? I thought it was quite an eye-opener on the merits of open-source vs the closed-source alternative. [1] http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/1472/1387 http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/rt...

by shurane 14y ago

batista 14y ago

>Sorry, I didn't mean to attack you or anything. Oh, no problem, I didn't get that impression. >I'm just praising the model and abilities of open-source and how much power it gives to the user. Well, what I'm tried to say it that much of this is "potential" power and not actual. It takes a community or at least several interested programmers to actualise it. Else, it's just the same as if the user didn't have the option at all. >But you can't tell me that having the option to do so isn't so freaking awesome. Would you prefer abandonware instead? No, sure, Open Source is better than closed source abandon-ware. Only pointing it that open source can be abandon-ware too (tons of abandoned projects on SourceForge and GitHub -- and not all for lack of interested users, mainly for lack of interested programmers).

shurane 14y ago
Personally, I think that everyone should have some form of programming chops. If only so people can program in the features that they want/need into the software they use. That's why I think programmers as users (that can contribute back!) are so beneficial. Heck, they can even help the lead programmer debug by finding stack traces, culprit lines in code, working on things the author can't make time for, etc. etc. You're right in that it's "potential" power, but I think it's just a matter of time of getting more people into the open-source and contributing mindset. I don't think enough of my coworkers or previous peers from uni respect the power of open-source. They just see open-source software as something... 'fixed'. It's either good, or not. They don't realize that they can easily change it with some determination. On a sidenote, have you read about the "Cathedral and the Bazaar" [1], by Eric S. Raymond? I thought it was quite an eye-opener on the merits of open-source vs the closed-source alternative. [1] http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/1472/1387 http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/rt...