Does OSS and Free Software Lack Originality?

[Bonface Munyoki K.]

[[[ Cc'ing the LUG to this discussion. Full thread
here:
https://upbookclub.com/t/this-january-what-will-you-be-reading/66/14]]]


Eastman via Urban Perspective Book Club
<nor...@upbookclub.com> writes:

> In the case of the open source movement, he talks
> about how Linux is indeed a lovely and polished
> piece of code but it lacks originality(it is
> defined by Unix) and the young bright minds of
> today are trapped in an intellectual framework of
> the 1970's thereby accepting old designs as if
> they are facts of nature.

Ah yes. There's some truth to this :)

> He goes further to argue that the more
> sophisticated and original examples of code (like
> Adobe Flash, the page-rank algorithms and the
> iPhone) have come out of closed, tyrannically
> managed software shops. That for creativity to
> flourish, you need focus and the open source
> community it too connected to maintain its
> criteria over a long period of time.
>

I'd be curious to see what the author defines as
creativity here. Yes, for some projects I'd opine
that things get too connected thereby making
progress slow; however, I'd also argue that
openness/freed /= strong cohesion with
communities.

> He also tells the story of how Richard Stallman
> decided to write Unix after working on the LISP
> machine didn't go too well. When Stallman told
> Lanier of his plan, Lanier was sad because
> Stallman chose to engage in "politically motivated
> code".

Well some of that "politically motivated code" has
done us some good :) ;)

> He talks about a lot of other stuff like how open
> content inhibits the potential to grow wealth for
> the creative content producers leading to a
> concentration of wealth in a few individuals. He
> also talks a bit about his early exploits in
> virtual reality too.
>
> I would suggest you take a shot and read it for
> yourself though (I'm just making a feeble attempt
> at paraphrasing).

Sure! His books look promising :)

--
Bonface M. K. D4F09EB110177E03C28E2FE1F5BBAE1E0392253F
Humble GNU Emacs User / Bearer of scheme-y parens
Curator: <https://upbookclub.com> / Twitter: @BonfaceKilz

[Martin Akolo Chiteri]

Hello,

Just a few comments

On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 2:37 PM Bonface Munyoki K. <m...@bonfacemunyoki.com> wrote:

[[[ Cc'ing the LUG to this discussion. Full thread
here:
https://upbookclub.com/t/this-january-what-will-you-be-reading/66/14]]]


Eastman via Urban Perspective Book Club
<nor...@upbookclub.com> writes:

> In the case of the open source movement, he talks
> about how Linux is indeed a lovely and polished
> piece of code but it lacks originality(it is
> defined by Unix)

Actually *BSDs have a lot more polish to their design and code with stellar system documentation :)

* "BSD for Linux users | ``Dramatis Personae`` " - https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/02

* "BSD for Linux users | ``Design :: The base system`` -  " https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/03

and the young bright minds of
> today are trapped in an intellectual framework of
> the 1970's thereby accepting old designs as if
> they are facts of nature.

Ah yes. There's some truth to this :)

I fully agree!

> He goes further to argue that the more
> sophisticated and original examples of code (like
> Adobe Flash, the page-rank algorithms and the
> iPhone) have come out of closed, tyrannically
> managed software shops. That for creativity to
> flourish, you need focus and the open source
> community it too connected to maintain its
> criteria over a long period of time.
>

I have seen the opposite of this argument made again from BSD world. The claim is that BSDs are a lot more controlled and orderly. Think of Theo De Raadt and his extremely tight leash that he maintains on OpenBSD or even Linus Torvalds now with the Linux kernel and Richard Stallman with the GNU project. Whereas the Linux kernel is chaotic, Linux is able to move in all sorts of directions for this reason some of which are truly innovative while *BSD have more carefully selected goals that are sharply focused on and while avoiding hackish / dirty / incomplete solutions

* "BSD for Linux users | ``Design :: The base system`` -  " https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/03

* "BSD for Linux users | ``Design philosophies`` - https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/08

The above are just someone's opinion, so they are not necessarily right or wrong. They only provide an alternative point of view on the topic.

CHEERS!

Martin.

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[Bonface Munyoki K.]

Hi Martin!

Martin Akolo Chiteri <martin....@gmail.com>
writes:

> Hello,
>
> Just a few comments
>
> On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 2:37 PM Bonface Munyoki K. <m...@bonfacemunyoki.com>
> wrote:
>

[...]

>> Eastman via Urban Perspective Book Club
>> <nor...@upbookclub.com> writes:
>>
>> > In the case of the open source movement, he talks
>> > about how Linux is indeed a lovely and polished
>> > piece of code but it lacks originality(it is
>> > defined by Unix)
>
> Actually *BSDs have a lot more polish to their design and code with stellar
> system documentation :)
> * "BSD for Linux users | ``Dramatis Personae`` " -
> https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/02
> * "BSD for Linux users | ``Design :: The base system`` - "
> https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/03
>

Thanks for these! I've began going through these
:)

I reckon what the author meant here is for those
truly innovative solutions, the Feynman-like
never-has-this-been-done before kind. I'm
speculating here though ;)

[...]

PS: Eastman, is there a way on discourse to allow
cross posts (like say when someone does a
wide-reply on e-mail) appear on our discourse
chatroom? That would be neat. I wouldn't mind
taking up the work of manually labelling spammers