Waking from open source dream
THE ponytails have been in short supply at the annual LinuxWorld bash in San Francisco this week. Chris DiBona of Google sported one of the few, as if to stress that one of the richest software companies in Silicon Valley remains studiously antiestablishment. Surrounded by trimmer figures in suits, he looked out of place — a throwback to the mythical days of late-night coding, libertarian politics and takeout pizza.
Something has happened to the open-source software movement. It is losing some of the intellectual purity that first drew in the ponytail crowd. It is being subverted to the interests of bigger technology companies — something that makes the idealists who created it angry and perturbs the romantics who like to see in it proof that individual human ingenuity can still outsmart faceless corporate power.
That is the wrong reaction: merging with the corporate mainstream is logical. It signals the success of open-source pioneers in reshaping the software landscape, not the end of a dream.
Open-source is a collection of methods for creating and distributing software that exposes inefficiency in parts of the commercial industry. The idealism that has surrounded this movement has always masked some hard-edged economic realities, which explains why it can be absorbed into the mainstream with relative ease.
Every software company worth its salt already has some open-source strategy.
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
- 2082 reads
- PDF version
More in Tux Machines
- Highlights
- Front Page
- Latest Headlines
- Archive
- Recent comments
- All-Time Popular Stories
- Hot Topics
- New Members
digiKam 7.7.0 is releasedAfter three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. |
Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand
|
Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future TechThe metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. |
today's howtos
|
Recent comments
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago
1 year 11 weeks ago