Good software isn't really free

Please, please, stop telling me or others that the success of OSS is easily demostrated by projects like Webkit, and the kernel, and Firefox, and apache.

If you're going to talk that drivel, at least be more specific. There are two kinds of OSS projects: First, there's the "I made this!" type. These projects often have assfuck users going around telling everyone how this project is better than everything else, and how every distro should replace some other working program with their new shit.

And then there's the "I have a workable business model" type. These are the ones you've probably heard of. The ones you raise as examples, as if somehow they represent how all open source projects could one day be successful. Quite not so coincidentally, these often (kernel excepted of course) also happen to run on Windows or other commercial OSes, which users actually use.

Projects like the kernel and firefox are exceptions in a sea full of shitty projects. They are how open source projects should be run. They've figured out how to create value that people will pay for. They have paid people working on them, producing valuable code, solving real problems, and are usually shipped in usable, tested ways.

Rarely, and I mean rarely (i.e. hard enough to find that it's not worth trying out 3000 different apt-get installs for programs that do the same thing), you find a project that has a really good developer writing really good code, but it's not backed by a sustainable model. These projects get far enough to get included on most distros (mostly feuled by ego), but then die, because the developer wakes the fuck up and realizes he should be getting paid, or some company comes along and snatches him up. I've come to hate using this kind of software, because I usually like it at first, but then I know that eventually it's going to shit (Ideally, you can continue to use the old version, but everybody who's tried this knows that doesn't work for long, but I'll save that for another rant).

For those textually impaired:



This is the so-called long tail of OSS software. Study it well. And stop being delusional and acting like all of it is hot shit. The good stuff is what the smart guys with good business models get paid to work on. The vast majority of the rest is crap. Not too unlike commercial softare you say? No shit. It's been happening for years.

BTW, I made that beautiful image using Gimp, one of your great tools. Too bad after 10 minutes of reading a bunch of tooltips and the help of a linux expert friend, we still couldn't figure out a straightforward way to draw a straight line. But who needs straight lines right?

I finally found it by googling it. You hold shift. Try doing it yourself. See if you find it intuitive.