[ILUG] Open Source Developers and Users Survey

[Michael Watterson]

Patrick O'Connor wrote:
> On 01/07/07, Michael Watterson <watty at eircom.net> wrote:
>> Kae Verens wrote:
>> > Patrick O'Connor wrote:
>> >>
>> >> http://survey.patrickoconnor.ie/index.php?sid=1
>> > unfortunately, I found this survey impossible to complete, as
>> > validation for questions 6 and 7 crap out if you choose "Benevolent
>> > Dictator".
>> >
>> > Also trying to save progress caused an error...
>> >
>> > Kae
>> to be balanced the survey should be taken by those not on an open source
>> related list, or with no use of open source to find out why they don't
>> use open source.
>
> True, but people like that are insignificant insects! LOL
> Only kidding, but the aims of the survey are to get some empirical
> data on the motivations open source developers and users. If people
> aren't developing / using open source they are not motivated to do so
> and hence not relevant to the survey.
Surely why they have a apparently a lower motivation may be very 
important to understanding the motivation.

I've developed SW for over 25 years. I've  been deploying "open source"  
solutions since 1998, but mostly closed source.  Most of the software  
I've ever developed has not been publish at all never mind released 
under any of the licences that might be regarded as open source.

Personally I prefer a good well designed & Documented API to any amount 
of  open source. I haven't time to look at other people's source. only a 
tiny percentage of time is beging able to view source important. Ease of 
deployment, API, documentation are more important. I'd rather pay $100 
for a licence and have a troubled free piece of software than get it for 
free and have to fiddle with the source to make it go.

When it comes to cross-develepment on embedded platforms suddenly I'm 
wanting source. If it's free or I have to pay something to commercially 
deploy it is a separate issuse. There is no mature reuseable 
transportable binary on PIC micros or tiny embedded linux gadgets.

So it's not simple and too much of the past of FSF / Open source seems 
to be more about recreating a clone of UNIX that is unencumbered with 
AT&T /Bell Lab patents/Copyright that should never have existed as much 
was done in Universities. Spending 30 years recreating a "free" version 
of a 1976 OS is not the best advertisement for Open Source.  So many of 
th prjects seem to be just attempts to have free clones of currently 
available commercial  SW, (Mono, Samba, Linux, Eclipse?) rather than 
innovating something.

Now we are starting to get the kind of Multiprocessor architectures I 
saw on Transputer in 1986, but without the tools as we are still using C 
and C++ is still misused to prodcue C programs and ideas such as Occam, 
Oberon, Modula-2 have died by the wayside in the lemming rush to reuse 
old UNIX stuff in MS Windows, Mac OS and Linux. The success of UNIX 
family on one hand and Microsoft on the other has held back CPU 
archtecture and Computer sicence for 20 years.

To be relevant, open source needs  to address these  issues and not 
simply  be seen as  a way to get free SW.

Rant over  :)