Philip Brown wrote: > O > Err, yes, that is EXACTLY HOW IT HAPPENED. sheesh. > > Go read Linus's descriptions of how Linux got where it is today. > Go read ESR's theories of open software. > > As a free software programmer for over 17 years, I can also tell you from > personal experience, this is exactly how it happens. > > Open source programers write what they need, to have it work. > Linus wrote what HE needed, to have Linux work for him. > Other people took what he wrote, and said "hey, this almost meets my needs, > but it just needs this little extra bit of code <here>". > They wrote that bit, sent it back to Linus, and used it themselves. > For the most part, no-one said, "hey, everyone tell me what you need for > YOUR purposes, and I'll spend all my time coding something that I dont > personally need". > > No, this is not it. It's not for personal. There is no accounting software for Solaris. It needs to be filled. There should be a course of action on determining what categories we need for the new CCD, then which software to fill them. It needs to be balanced to be acceptable. It needs to be done this way to be effective. A list should be made, then anyone signing up to volunteer should be expected to choose one item from that list. I have joined a national volunteer organization locally (Civil Air Patrol), and joining so I agreed to do my job that is assigned to me whether or not I feel like doing so or not. It is part of the obligation I agreed to. Also, the way I see it, if everybody does things one way, it doesn't make that way right. My analogy to this is, McDonalds restaurants are by far the most popular, with the most volume, but not the best. To be better, you don't need to follow the popular flow. The CCD needs to be done the most effective way to be useful to the broadest amount of people with the fewest developers.
It's not something good to say "we have 1500 software packages here, but 1200 are libraries, that leaves 300 software packages of which non are for accounting, none are for people who like to use GUI's, but they basically fill the needs of what our developers want, not what the community needs". Now I'm not saying Blastwave is bad, I just think some things need to be done differently to be effective. I'm sure you will still find volunteers to work under some new constraints. > If you want something done, but are too lazy to do the work yourself, and > too cheap to pay any kind of money to encourage someone else to do it... > you can *request* that someone make something for you... but enough of this > illusion that you are somehow entitled to have everyone do everything you > want, the way you want it, for free. > The whole point of "Open Source", is; "if you need something, here's the > source code, now go write it/build it/make it yourself" > I guess that would be good for software developers. I'm not. I'm a mechanical engineer, I have different skills. But I'm still part of the community. And I'm not going to try and force anybody to compile written software for me, but I'm going to voice my opinion on what I think is deficient in trying to build up an open software base. > The more business parts of things that get used with Linux, only got done > because Redhat/IBM/et. al, PAID MONEY for the privilege of telling a > coder, "you're going to write this for us now". > > "I feel like it", and "I got paid money", are the two sum total factors of how > linux+suse+redhat+.... got built. > > Even the oh-so-wonderful open source ATI 3d acceleration support, in the > xfree86 tree, got built... BECAUSE SOMEONE PAID MONEY for it to be done. > It's a pain in the butt and way too much time for anyone to have done in > their freetime, so it wasnt getting done otherwise. > > _______________________________________________ > companion-discuss mailing list > companion-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/companion-discuss > >
