- About open and closed solutions -

There are many threads with similar name, but this one ought to be about what actually can be done to change the ratio of open and closed solutions.

I think that closed projects are doomed to be replaced one day by projects that retain objectivity in providing a good service that is adjusted by the whole community, not just by project head-master. But, closed solutions are currently winning the fight (i.e. take a look at ratio of linux/win commitments). Closed solutions providers are not so weak fighters as they are well organized, but for my taste they are too much strong hierarchy oriented.

In contrary, Linux world simply glows in freedom that each programmer has. Unfortunately, Linux is taking only 3% of altogether software users (my rough estimation). What is the reason?

I recently googled for "hdd activity light on screen linux". I flipped five pages of google search results and I found this: Windows - rocks, but Linux - only one entry with instructions how to do it with shell script and keyboard indicators:http://superuser.com/questions/36269...stom-indicator

Such a power for advanced user, but ordinary users are "doomed" to windows. Great tools in windows there, but imho their domination insult linux (group of enthusiastic programmers) power and potential...

Quite simple, actually. Buying a computer with Linux pre-installed is extremely difficult and, when it can be done, tends to be in the higher-end of the market. Most users have never and will never install an OS. They use what comes on the box.

Linux, though, is becoming dominant in the embedded and mobile spaces, and has always been strong in the server space.

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Boy I'd like to make Linux available to ordinary-user level. We would loose the *stimmung* of power-user-community, but ordinary-users would get alternative of using apps made in healthy environment where everyone is entitled to creativity.

Linux community ignited ongoing opensource flame, but for ordinary users the Windows is still more reasonable choice. To catch up with windows, Linux community needs some little bit of organization. If they had a site where they could share existing plans of making applications, redundant work could be avoided and it would be easier for us to catch up with application manufacturing process.

In current arrangement, to participate in making application, we need to choose interesting project, catch project head master to get project specification and to make a contribution.

With proposed solution, all projects would primary have exposed its project specifications. All projects would share the same pattern of open organization planning. Everyone would in every moment know what are project's future plans and who makes what contribution currently. Having all of this exposed in one place would be a little help to programmers on choosing a project to participate in.

This kind of organization might be enough to raise quality of Linux applications, as it would provide us with informations about future plans of every project, which could be used to plan which contribution to make.

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fro...um/free-nation

I'm sorry if this sounds unintelligent but what exactly is the change you are trying to ignite?

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@ghoultek

I must admit I've been pretty mysterious on this, so to make it clear, here is one of goals, simple and clear: to outstand Windows products!

Current situation with Linux is: incredible working atmosphere, but right hand doesn't know what left hand does. Too many people are working on the same problems, having tens of versions of the same software application. If they could collaborate somehow (while retaining their freedom), redundant work could be avoided, resulting in less count of applications, but these would be more usable.

Here is a proposal: to have a site where projects would be publicly planned, just to allow programmers to pick up specific task in already existing project, instead of starting a new solo project.

If the experiment would show up as successful with programming, i thought it would be worth of try to extend it at other non-software productions (catching "occupy" flame). This is one of tries to experiment with p2p philosophy.

If U are curious, the site prototype is here. I started with very few basic ideas, made a prototype, but right now (i'm afraid so) the project is entirely elaborated as objective as i could, because i was solo till now.

Admitt, pretty ambitious

In the real world, the operating system is not "an end unto itself." It is: "a means to an end." You purchase a computer system, probably with an OS already installed on it, to do things with it. You want the operating system to fade into the background where it properly belongs and to "It Just Works.™"

Windows does that. So does OS/X, which is what I happen to be using right now as I type this. People do not purchase computers and let that determine their selection of what applications to run on it. No, they determine what applications they need to run and they purchase the computer that does that best.

Linux does not rule "the desktop space," nor does it particularly need to. Operating systems do not displace one another. I defy you to walk into a shop of any size and find only one type of operating-system there. From a business perspective, neither the cost-justification nor the risk-justification is there, and you frankly don't care what the "fan boys" think. Each type of machine is chosen for its intended purpose, and all of them have to be (easily! reliably!) configured to seamlessly work together.

The reason why what you're asking for hasn't happened, is not that anyone is "clueless." Nor is it that anyone who's making the decisions (thinks | fails to realize) that "Linux is cool." They might not like writing multi-thousand dollar checks each year to Microsoft Corporation (or to Apple, or to Red Hat), but that's not the reason either. The reason for what you are seeing is that it is, in fact, the best-all-around business decision that presently can be made.

@sundialsvcs

I just feel sorry for classic corporation employees (I think 97% of people) to work chained by decisions of their superiours. If only they could have the freedom met in the open source world.

Right now, in classic business world employees do well what and how they are told to do. But could employees contribute the community with their creativity better than a crew who doesn't have the influence on final product accordingly to their own opinion? U might think that classic business world is not that much conservative, but does "strong hierarchy" notion tells something to U?

I think people can contribute much more to community if they were treated like someone who can solve problems in their own respective way, only if they organize themselves a little bit more then now (i'll appeal here on open source software community after the site is finished). The real problem is in organizing business to be enough productive while providing enough freedom to the crew to take decisions that are reflection of their own respectful opinion.

Can one person that doesn't take opinions of the crew, steer the boat in the best way? Currently that kind of organization beats the crap out of open source world by its efficiency. But I don't think that is the best way to do things. People are under too much stress there, they can't make their own decisions the most of the time. I think it is not a healthy environment for a job to do.

So I think strong hierarchy system should not be left in glorification.

I was about to reply to this and bring up Dell, but they dropped Ubuntu from their package offerings on their website. I am shocked, but at the same time it isn't surprising to me. Michael Dell damn near worships Bill Gates/Microsoft and he isn't going to bite the hand (of Bill Gates) that feeds him.

Thanks ivanvodisek for replying and please pardon my text wall.

You have a very lofty set of goals and you sound as though your heart (intentions) and ideals are in the right place. Just be sure that you understand how and why things are the way they are. What you are attempting to do is organize and streamline the Linux community to make it better at competing against corporate funded proprietary development shops. This is a great thing. However, organizing and streamlining is by definition imposing order and structure. Structure and organization provide the first level of efficiency for free, but come at a price. The price is the erosion of freedom of choice and to a lesser extent creativity.

The price paid for structure and organization is the very same freedom that the community staunchly defends. The staunchly defended freedoms come at a price as well. The price is redundancy, inefficiencies, and to an extent chaos. The chaos I'm referring to is the "all chiefs and no Indians" kind of chaos, where everyone is doing their own thing. So in effect you have to surrender part of one thing to get more of the other.

While I understand the need for free software, I don't believe all software should be free and that free software should completely wipe out proprietary software. What is needed is a balance. Free software definitely helps to keep proprietary software and companies that own them in check. This is because free software has the potential to put proprietary development shops out of business. Proprietary software counter balances free software in that free software has to compete against very well organized paid teams (employed by companies) that have access to a large pool of resources. The pool of resources (especially money) available to proprietary software product developers tends to be larger than what the free software developers have access to.

I know a lot of people are going to dislike and/or disagree with my view point. However, if all software were completely free of charge, then software developers would have near zero employment and business opportunities. Even software developers have to pay their bills, support themselves and their families.

Since I believe we need balance, I'm sure there are many who would appreciate your work and ideas. There will also be others who will not see it as a benefit to them.

I think a good idea could be to simply clone current healthy competition in existing multi-company world, but on finer level, in product realization. A product requester would simply state what needs to be done, but not how. Anyone interested in product realization could hop in to provide a solution to task he finds valuable for the product. By publicly exposing his solution of solved task he gives other collaborators a chance to use it in solving other tasks they (in their own opinion) find valuable for the product. It would be up to each new collaborator to choose either a completely new task he wants the product to benefit from, either competing existing task that does not suits him.

-"How" part restriction?
History, I think.

-"What" part restriction?
Everyone does what he wants to do.

-Strong hierarchy?
People hierarchy or project hierarchy?

-Free software?
Entirely up to each collaborator what he wants to do with his peace of the product.

Nothing new, nothing unseen, just public exposition of the work done on project level. To do this there needs to be a simple way to gather new crew incomers in one place and to provide a simple way to characterize each solved task. Organized, we could do much more than unrelated each to other.

I like this idea, i ought to be working on this now.

People, here I am.

There is something i've discovered some time ago that can be applied to various things. Structuring of data was my primary intention, but it turned out it can be used for structuring projects too. It is a graphical way to structure things and this is how it can be applied to collaborative programming. Please don't ask me how long it took to get here, but here are results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUtbGM_-_VM

Interested?