Some People Don't Get Open Source

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»Some People Don\'t Get Open Source

When I read an article like <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9984165-16.html">this</a> on CNet, I wonder how people retain their credibility as editors. Let's take a quote...

Quote

The proprietary world feels the need to rebuild everyone else's software in order to create walled-garden ecosystems. Unfortunately, the open-source world builds even more variants of the same products, though for different reasons.

Are we the world's least efficient market? Imagine what would happen if we could all pull behind a few credible alternatives, rather than inventing 585 of them?

The whole point of being free and open source is that you give the freedom to allow anyone to use the code in the best way for them. If a million companies use a program and each company modifies it slightly for their internal use, what's the problem? That the huge benefit of open source over proprietary software. Sticking to one branch only doesn't work for open source software... Remember XFree86? Where is that now that they changed their license? Forking is a matter of fact and is encourage when stuff like that happens.

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The problem is that the editor on CNet was talking about something that was true from only a theoretical standpoint. The open source market has much more variety because that is the point of open source, and throwing everyone behind one thing ends up making a program closed source after a while.

Exactly correct.

That's what happened with XFree86 and now we have X.org that replaced it.