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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Open source vs Closed source... What makes Open Source tick.
From:       Stefan Majewsky <majewsky () gmx ! net>
Date:       2009-07-30 8:57:34
Message-ID: 200907301057.37317.majewsky () gmx ! net
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Am Donnerstag 30 Juli 2009 09:20:02 schrieb viwe lolwane:
> Well in open source the disadvantage is , unless a project is viewed as a
> winner it will not attract and retain volunteers to work on that project. 

No. I'm working on an opensource project alone, it has maybe a dozen users, 
but I'm enjoying working on it. (http://code.google.com/p/kandas)

> further more the members of an open source team must at
> all time made to feel that they are making a contribution.

There is nothing like a management team that generates a community feeling. 
Those who make a contribution, get feedback on that.

> this at sometime can leave some of the parts
> of the software being left to gather dust without being maintained either
> because they are being seen as unattractive or useless.

This is also a risk with proprietary software. For example, Microsoft is 
recently discontinuing quite a number of web services and applications (MS 
Money and Popfly, for instance) because they're making not enough profit with 
it. Where is the difference?

> This bring me to my next point how many open source projects have been
> successful?

Here is another proof of your flawed methodology: You fail to define the term 
"success". Because of its nature, open source development must not be targeted 
towards monetary success. When we write educational software that teaches 
millions of pupils all over the world, that is a great success. When one 
creates a ten-line script that simplifies some everyday task, it's also a 
great success.

> Individuals are unlikely to  devote a considerable portion of their spare
> time if the project is viewed as winner,
> from this I can asked a question did linus, believe that Linux will be
> widely utilized when he started the OS.

Absolutely not. If you were a real researcher, you'd have looked for Linus' 
initial postings to newsgroups about Linux, and would have seen that this was 
just a toy project to learn something about programming a x86 PC operating 
system. For example:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/thread/76536d1fb451ac60/b813d52cbc5a044b?#b813d52cbc5a044b


> I think he did not, maybe he did the point I m making here is how can you
> be sure that a project will be a winner. thats a hard question to answer.

If we would only start projects which will surely suffice, there wouldn't be 
any open source software at all. OSS nearly always starts in a small scale.

> Well most of the post have attacked me via Microsoft Win32 API, I can not
> speak for microsoft and frankly I believe some of the things they did where
> stupid. but How every one knows that their API is crap, if they never seen
> the code, they never tested the code. 

We are not talking about the code, but about the API, which is easily visible 
even for outsiders (and it's supposed to).

> Microsoft must have thousands of testers to perform
> inspections and walkthrough and correctness
> proving. One might never be sure that the product is 100% without defects,
> but microsoft OS must be closer to that.
> 
> How many testers does KDE have?

Thousands of OSS enthusiasts are testing our beta and RC builds, and ATM we're 
getting about 120 bug reports a day (not counting reports to the task trackers 
of the distributors).

> the numbers speak for themselves, how can
> you be certain that your application/SDK is without defects or is better
> that Microsoft OS? thats a question.

Nothing is without defects, but I can tell from my own experience. I wrote 
programs in Visual Basic .NET for about two years. It was quite enjoyable, but 
the .NET APIs are very streamlined towards common tasks, and you have to go 
back to the (truly awful) Win32 API for any non-trivial task. In contrast, the 
Qt and kdelibs APIs might not be perfect, but they always allow to add missing 
features, without me having to include X11 or Linux headers.

Greetings
Stefan


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