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The Social Structure of Open Source Development 391

Posted by CmdrTaco from the house-of-cards-and-cigarettes dept.
HulkProtector1 writes "NewsForge has published an interview Tom Chance conducted with Andreas Brand, a sociologist who is studying the free software world. Read the full interview to learn more about Andreas' views on KDE's development model, volunteer recruitment and retention, motivation, work distribution and more. "
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The Social Structure of Open Source Development More

The Social Structure of Open Source Development

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  • While we're talking about the social structure... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @11:45AM (#11550788) Homepage Journal
    Why do most Open Source developers, hackers and software hobbyists appear to be male? The bias is easily visible on most open source websites, discussion boards (/.), and even in the Credits/Contributors list of Linux and other projects.

    Not intended to be flamebait, and from a quick readthrough, the article did not seem to address this inequality. We do hear a bevy of jokes about no females reading /....but what really is the reason?

    • Re:While we're talking about the social structure. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @11:46AM (#11550816)
      Obviously, boys are smarter than girls.
      (This *is* meant to be flamebait -- and posted anonymously, so I don't ruin my chances with the girl who reads /. ... I know you're out there baby, and I love you!)
      • Obviously you're just the president of Harvard.
        • Did anyone here actually listen to or personally hear that speech or some of the followup interviews? The president of Harvard said something to the effect of, "There's different numbers of men and women in the sciences, and research should be done to see why: is it nature or nurture?"

          Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds like a relatively innocent thing to say to me. I could see where you could misinterpret it... but it has sunk into the world's consciousness as a proven fact that the president of
        • On a serious note, I don't think the president of Harvard said anything wrong. Observing trends and tencencies backed up by actual numbers isn't sexism, it is reality. Men and women are different, especially women. I don't fricken understand them, and am insulted when people say we are equal! I am married, and she doesn't understand me either. We just look at the world quite differently.

        • Re:While we're talking about the social structure. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Otter ( 3800 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:24PM (#11551313) Journal
          That was an interesting incident, wasn't it? At the very epicenter of academia, Summers says something controversial and the response isn't "I disagree!", it isn't "You're wrong!", it's "You must never say such a thing! It is forbidden! Now grovel for forgiveness!".

          If this is the way professors treat the freaking President of Harvard freaking University, is it a surprise that undergrads feel inhibited from speaking freely in class?

      • I don't know, but when I was going through CS classes we started with about a 50:50 ratio of boys to girls. Okay, maybe 60:40. I only know of 3 girls out of maybe 30 that finished.

        Just guessing, I would guess 30 boys finished. So 30:3? Seeing as how my /. number is 760290, does that mean /. has 76,290 female users? Wow!

        • Re:Slashdot has 76,000 female users! (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          here's one?

          dude, we're out there. you boys are so thick-skulled, you don't see that we don't preface every comment we make with "hey, i'm a girl!"

          because that would be stupid.

          anyway, i agree with the CS class ratio, but more interesting to me was the stratification. there were sort of three 'levels' of CS-type degrees at my UG. businessy computer stuff, regular CS, and engineering. in the beginning, when we all shared classes, there were lots of girls, but they almost all ended up in the businessy, l

        • Re:Slashdot has 76,000 female users! -- like me? (Score:4, Funny)

          by mgoss ( 790921 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @01:27PM (#11552006)

          In my CS classes, it's more like a 10:1 ration of guys to gals, but that's a fairly small private university.

          So, I'm female. I love computers, programming, linux, gentoo... hopefully in the future there will be more and more people like me.

          I mean, there's got to be some females to help pass on geekiness to their kids. But I just don't think my mom would understand an e-mail that said something to the effect of "emerging package baby, nine month compilation time!"

          By the way, geeky pick-up lines are the best. And I find all you guys very amusing.

          PS, no you can't have my e-mail address. :)

          • MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:1, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward
            PS, no you can't have my e-mail address. :)

            MOD PARENT DOWN!
          • "PS, no you can't have my e-mail address. :)"

            Street address would be fine.

            In all seriousness though, while your parents don't understand your field of choice, they surely call you every time they need help. I hate getting calls that start with "Hi, you don't know me, but I am your moms friends hamsters former-owners uncles sons 2nd best friend, would you fix my computer? It doesn't work good."

      • Re:While we're talking about the social structure. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Frymaster ( 171343 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:15PM (#11551204) Homepage Journal
        Obviously, boys are smarter than girls.

        maybe attitudes like this are the reason there aren't that many women in programming.

        my girlfriend spent four years at school and three years in the industry going from one software shop before she finally quit the whole biz because of attitudes like that. she works at a homeless shelter now and says that her mentally ill and drug addicted clients are easier to work with than the average alpha geek.

        • "mentally ill and drug addicted clients"
          vs.
          "average alpha geek"
          How many average alpha geeks land up as a mentally ill and drug addicted client? Does she server food to any of her former coworkers? A female friend of mine left CS for a similar reason.
        • maybe attitudes like this are the reason there aren't that many women in programming.

          Maybe humor is a difficult concept. :-)

          Seriously, I'm about as ardently anti-sexist as they come, and even I understood the humor (that BTW was clearly intended as much as a tongue-in-cheek criticism of sexism in the technical fields as anything else)

          So chill.
          • Sure, it was humorous. But it's because it reflects actual attitudes that makes it funny. So what's wrong with debating the issues that a joke brings up?

            A joke can do two things when dealing with serious issues. It can be used to smooth over the issue and allows us to dismiss the issue. Or it can highlight the issue, and open it up for debate.
        • easier to work with than the average alpha geek.

          What about theta g33k5?

        • Maybe the many scientific studies that show that men and women are not the same help too.

          You know, that the average woman and the average man think differently? There's a reason my wife who got into Computer Engineering at 16 yrs old and studied VAX assembly language still asks me to change the settings on our home machine -- she couldn't be bothered to do it herself. She's more than capable, but the itch isn't there.

          I meet guy after guy doing OSS work and they're "scratching an itch", and when we discu
        • her mentally ill and drug addicted clients are easier to work with than the average alpha geek

          What a surprise. Losers who totally fucked up in everything they tried are less arrogant than people who stand at the top of a successful, well paid, career?

          Your girlfriend seems to be have a rather intolerant personality. She needs to work with people that are clearly inferior to her, because she can't stand the sugestion that anyone could be superior to herself. If she can't stand the occasional banter from co

          • What a surprise. Losers who totally fucked up in everything they tried are less arrogant than people who stand at the top of a successful, well paid, career?

            are you implying that people who are mentally ill are to blame for their condition?

            Your girlfriend seems to be have a rather intolerant personality. She needs to work with people that are clearly inferior to her, because she can't stand the sugestion that anyone could be superior to herself.

            very insightful! by this "logic" we can assume that progr

          • Or do you think it's easy, from a human point of view, to be called a "geek" or a "nerd", both pejorative terms...

            If you really have issues with being referred to as a "geek" or a "nerd," why do you read Slashdot: News for Nerds?

        • Men are often abrasive to each other without any malice and are pretty used to bluntness. However, women tend to be more tactful in person. Neither way is inherently "better" than the other; they're just the recognized and documented differences in the way the genders interact.

          So how does this affect women in the technical workplace? A lot of your "alpha geeks" are snotty, condescending jerks. Men brush it off as a personality annoyance and accept it as part of the cost of interacting with those peopl

        • maybe attitudes like this are the reason there aren't that many women in programming.

          Did you read the second line? It was meant as a joke...

          (This *is* meant to be flamebait -- and posted anonymously, so I don't ruin my chances with the girl who reads /. ... I know you're out there baby, and I love you!)

          Why must everything be taken as an insult?

    • Re:While we're talking about the social structure. (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @11:51AM (#11550882)
      Maybe it's safe to draw an analogy to Family Guy:

      Lois: I guarantee you a man made that commercial.
      Peter: Of course a man made it. It's a commercial Lois, not a delicious thanksgiving dinner.

    • "Appear to be male"? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why do most Open Source developers, hackers and software hobbyists appear to be male?

      Dunno - perhaps it has something to do with a generally barrel-like physique and likelihood of facial hair. Careful, though - appearances can be deceiving.

    • Well, I can speak from experience that myself and my other male engineer peers do not do anything to make women avoid engineering or computers in general. Maybe it's time we stop looking for some outside source or plan to keep women out of engineering roles and first look to your own for an answer. The women I know in engineering are intelligent, driven, and very much my peers in all respects. There just aren't many of them. Get women more interested in engineering first, then check to see if programs/p
    • It is especially interesting, considering that you can't blame the men for not hiring the women...because there's no real hiring involved. Although I guess the feminist argument there would be that women were prevented from the education necessary to begin with; however, from my limited perspective, that's not the case. I wouldn't say that its because women are less capable than men at developing software, but I would say that women are less interested in doing so...just as I would say men are not less capa

    • Because most developers are male, nothing special about the open source ones (in this regard)

    • Because no work would get done if females came in!
    • Maybe there are a few more women among you than you realize. This is the first time I've posted, but a read quite a bit. But we're out here...I'm just not a contributor to open source development. HI GUYS!!! *waving*
    • Why do most Open Source developers, hackers and software hobbyists appear to be male?


      Uh, because most computer geeks are male.

      Next!
    • From all that I can tell females are less interested in engineering then men. Concider the situation at the science/engineering college I went to. There were more males then females, but that could be caused by all sorts of things, and is not the point I want to make. Instead look at what majors the females who were there chose. From my observation the departments with the highest percentage of females were biology, chemistry, psycology, then physics, geology, with the fewest in CS, EE, and mechanical. Now

    • Re:Why are most FOSS developers male? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by softcoder ( 252233 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:54PM (#11551604)
      Perhaps you should ask the project lead for Mozilla, who is I believe, female. At the 2004 OsCON they had a panel about FOSS volunteers. The Apache lead mentioned that there were two groups of people who tended to drop out early: women, and Japanese. In his opinion, they were driven away by the flame wars on the mailing lists. Women, and Japanese, were just not comfortable with the level of 'discussion'. The Apache head was not happy about this, but there doesn't seem much he can do.

      • The Apache head was not happy about this, but there doesn't seem much he can do.

        This is a complete copout. Here's a story.

        I had two professors in college. One of them would lead class discussions, in which the sizable number of female students would tend to be quieter, and at some quiet point, he would kind of chuckle embarrasedly and say, "you know, it would be great if we heard some more from the women." And right afterwards, maybe a woman would say something out of obligation, but then things woul

    • Re:While we're talking about the social structure. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Money for Nothin' ( 754763 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @01:13PM (#11551809)
      We do hear a bevy of jokes about no females reading /....but what really is the reason?

      Women tend to be more social than men? Men have a greater enjoyment of technical problems than women? Boys play with dump trucks and military characters and Legos and Erector sets (more individual, technically-creative toys), while girls play with Barbies and lipstick and new clothes (more social, more fashionably-creative items)?

      Some would say it's because men ostracize women in the workplace, but that ignores the fact that men go into Computer Science schools in a ratio of about 20:1, and engineering schools (what I've seen of them, anyway) in ratio of like 10:1 or 5:1. Perhaps this stems from earlier-childhood ostracization from letting girls play with dump trucks and BB guns and Legos and other activities which might turn them into a "tomboy"?

      Or perhaps it's simply a product of genetic evolution which tells men to take technical problems in greater proportion than women (evolutionary history summed up as follows -- man: hunt for food and fend off predators and other men using innovative killing tools; woman: cook food, wash clothes, take care of kids)?

      We may all be equal under the law (as we should be), but let's not kid ourselves - men and women *are* different, and that fact is as bluntly-obvious as the fact that we have different sex organs. And the difference, IMO, probably manifests itself in other factors of "manhood" or "womanhood" as well.

      (Disclaimer: these are all vague sociological generalizations which will not apply in specific scenarios. But isn't that what sociology is about - vague over-generalization? :P )
      • Boys play with dump trucks and military characters and Legos and Erector sets (more individual, technically-creative toys), while girls play with Barbies and lipstick and new clothes (more social, more fashionably-creative items)?

        When my son plays with dolls, they [the dolls, under his control] fight and build things. When my daughter plays with trucks, the mommy truck takes care of the baby trucks. The boy builds guns and forts with legos, the girl builds houses for the mommy truck and the baby trucks.

        • One fact that no liberal and no feminist seems to want to accept is that boys and girls are different

          As a liberal (well actually NDP, but that's even further left) feminist I have to butt in.

          I accept that men and women are different, not merely in their reproductive capabilities. Yes, males tend to dominate mathematical fields, Females language-based fields. I would argue that this is in part due to innate predispositions and in part due to societal reinforcement. Exactly how much of which is open for
      • I wonder if this can be linked to speech as well? Men talk to solve problems, women talk to share them. Could explain why more men are technically minded (mechanics, computers, etc) and more women are in caring professions (nurses, teachers, etc).

        Just a thought.
    • I suspect that the current state has a lot to do with the image of computers in the 80s, which is when a lot of the current developers got interested. Back then, computers in general were viewed as somewhat obscure and especially difficult to program, and they would only be given to kids who were expected to be interested in science and technology. At the time, girls were not commonly seen as potentially interested in technology, so they were unlikely to have computers to be interested by. Women have become
    • Well, this is an interesting question, and I can only speak from my own experience, but I personally feel it's more nurture than nature.

      Next time you go shopping, go to the toy section of the store and look how boys' toys and girls' toys treat the subject of electricity. Last time I went, the boy's section had a toy that showed boys how to make a circuit, and the only toy in the girls' section that had anything to do with electricity was a magic genie lamp that required batteries to "magically" glow. And t
    • According to this Press Release [uci.edu] from University of California Irvine [uci.edu] (also covered by many news media), men's and women's brains are more different than almost anybody thought. The difference may explain why women are generally better at tasks requiring so-called "relational intelligence" and men are generally better at tasks requiring single topic focus (math, engineering, etc.) Computer programming in general falls into the topical domain.

      From the press release:

      "In general, men have approximately 6.5

    • Ask Harvard University President Lawrence Summers [uchicago.edu]

      Then again, maybe you better not [harvard.edu]
    • Most programmers, coders and engineers are male; IMHO this is due to the largely redundant and linear thinking process that is required. For a good coder or engineer, you have to be able to consistently trace a single logic path, and find it's breakdown or completion. Women think differently than men, in a more 'explosive' pattern really, giving them distinct advantages in group management, project leadership, etc. men tend to think in this sequence A goes to B goes to C goes to D (etc.) and women tend to t
    • Most programmers are male, whether doing open source work or otherwise. Most engineers are male. Most mechanics are male. So are most carpenters. Guys like to make stuff. The sexes are different. Get over it.

  • It's an interesting article (Score:4, Insightful)

    by digitalgimpus ( 468277 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @11:47AM (#11550820) Homepage
    But I'd personally like to see a reflection on more open source projects than just 1 or 2.

    There are a million+1 projects now. Some with only 2 people, some with hundreds. I'd like to see what the research shows in a larger sampling.

    I'm guessing some of the smaller projects (1-10 people) will have different motivational and organizational factors than a larger project. Simply because of the group dynamics.
    • I'd personally like to see a reflection on more open source projects than just 1 or 2

      Ditto. And correllate to some other factors as well. A Linux has a huge potential installed base, because it is a general-use application. But what about something like PCGen [sourceforge.net], which is very focused, yet still has a pretty large development group (from what I can tell). Then projects with only a few maintainers. There is also the dynamic of rewriting an existing application to a new language that may alter results (li

  • It's a religion. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by theGreater ( 596196 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:00PM (#11551020) Homepage
    No really, think about it. You have a core set of guys who are -really- in touch with the new movement (RMS and ESR come to mind), but who tend to upset a lot of "normal" people. Following in their footsteps, you have a slightly larger, more polished set of people; religions call these "disciples" but we tend to call them "maintainers." They decide where the needs of the real world intersect with the tenets of the ideology.

    Then there's you and me. Honestly, most of us have no idea about the gory details of the whole thing. We gladly use free and libre and EULA'd software to get along in our daily lives. Some of us are more dedicated than others, and we only run Debian. Or Catholix. Or whatever. No matter which one we choose, it's "The Best One" and all others are inferior in some way.

    LUG's as churches, LiveCD's as evangelism... the list goes on and on and on of why Libre and Open Source software are more like a social / religious organization, and less like a goods and services production group.

    -theGreater Zealot.
    • We gladly use free and libre and EULA'd software to get along in our daily lives.

      I haven't seen any free software EULA, have you? The GPL is a distribution license, so are the BSD licenses. You don't have to accept those to use the software.

    • religions are magic (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      religion - a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny;
      open source - A method and philosophy for software licensing
      philosophy - any personal belief about how to live or how to deal with a situation

      You seem to have religion and philosophy confused. Unfortunately this isnt unusual because for most people religion has hijacked their philosophy and ethics.

      (source = hyperdictionary.com)
      • You seem to be confusing religion and superstition. You are certainly entitled to that belief, but one is a fear-based avoidance of certain unreasonable things, the other is typically a system of maxims for living one's life; they are not mutually exclusive.

        Also, you may have noticed that many of the great philosophers spend a lot of time ruminating about god, existence, and other domains of religion. Why shouldn't religion be allowed to return the favor?

        I certainly do wish everything was as clear cut
    • I have to strongly disagree with you. Yes, the superficial structure may be similar; but the difference is in the _memes_. The memes associated with/spread by FLOSS are things like sharing your efforts; in contrast religious memes are, almost by definition, of the form "If you don't join us you are going to Hell. If you do x, y, or z you are going to Hell."

      The only meme I can really find in common is respecting the leadership; but forks of religions only happen by people so up in the hierarchy as to be di

      • I've seen this statement made several times in many forms: "If you're not US, you're THEM and our ENEMY."

        In religion it takes the form of "Follow these teachings or you're not 'saved'." In FOSS it takes the form of "Use this license or you're not 'free'.".

        And, of course, as in all other worlds, you have two endpoints for people to lie between.

        -theGreater.
        • I would be willing to entertain the idea that RMS' "Free Software" ideology is like a religion. But the point of differentiating "Open Source" from "Free Software" is to get away from that zealotry. Besides which, there are very many projects that simply don't care about such issues, preferring to focus on the software itself (as it should be.)
      • It's not all about hell. Sometimes it's about heaven. Destroy the World Trade Center and get laid by seventy seven babes for all of eternity. Free your mind to get out of the karmic rat race. Etc, etc.
    • An interesting concept. Most people only have "room" in their minds for 1 religion. It would be curious to tally up the religious beliefs of really "devout" OSS supporters and see how many are atheists. Perhaps OSS is being dropped into people's "worship" slot.
      • I've thought about this before. I think there is an innate need in human beings for religion. Atheists fill this need with non-theistic things. When you get groups of atheists together, they tend to product their own non-theist religion, complete with ethos, priesthoods, sacred texts, rituals, etc.

        The prime example is communism (as opposed to socialism). The state is revered as holy, the works or Marx are sacred, party leaders are priests, etc.

        Many geeks are agnostics or atheists, and I think there is a s

    • Public interest groups have all these traits also, but feed a more "material" needs.

      Religions tend to have mutually-exclusive licenses whereas interest groups do not.

    • No, it's not a religion. The parallels you point out work pretty well, because religion and open source movements both fall under the category of "social movements", and most social movements have those sorts of things in common.

      The religious comparison may be a sore spot for those of us who see religious belief as usually irrational or anti-rational. But many social movements contain elements of anti-rationalism. For example, Communism isn't a religion, but its statements about the workings of his

  • Recruitment (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IceFox ( 18179 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:07PM (#11551102) Homepage
    The article touches on recruitment and how in open source developers come and go. So might as well ask /.

    If you are working on an open source project, what has caused you to join an open source project?

    -Benjamin Meyer

    • Re:Recruitment (Score:4, Interesting)

      by PhilRod ( 550010 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:44PM (#11551522)
      I'd like to widen the question that icefox put, to
      As a member of an open source team, what attitude and methods do you use towards recruitment?

      I think this touches on a wider issue relating to open source (free software, peer-directed projects, whatever you want to call it), namely how we deal with the less strictly technical aspects of the software itself. Most of the discussion on, say, OSS mailing lists is directed towards coding, as of course it should be, since it's the software itself that is the object of the exercise. But there are plenty of other important and useful ways of improving software and people's experience of it: documentation, usability considerations, promotion, and so on.

      Improving these aspects of software in an open-source model seems to be a very different task to writing code. It requires 'soft' skills - the ability to attract people, help them learn the ropes, and then retain them as contributors. In a business model, of course, you can pay people to do the marketing and the usability testing (say), but in an open project, you can't force people to do what they don't want to.

      As a contributor to KDE for a few years now, I think we as a project have perhaps thought too little about these wider things, but what have other projects done about them? Do you rely on companies to sponsor developers (not necessarily coders!) who can work on these less popular areas, or do you require coders to provide, say, documentation or usability testing for their apps?

    • have a need. solved it.

    • I enjoy programming. It's more fun and rewarding when you do it with other people.

      Simple as that.

    • It's fun, Gives me an output for my creativity. I think of coding as art in some ways. And OSS gives me the oppotunity get my "art" viewed and appreciated by others. It's as simple as that really.
    • If you are working on an open source project, what has caused you to join an open source project?

      Most of the time people slowly get involved with the project. Enter the forums/mailing lists, post suggestions, perhaps start fixing a few bugs or help other people out, slowly start to implement bigger features.. And before you realize it, people will be asking you for comments about their idea's. That's how it kind-of happened to me, but I also had an itch to scratch and the developers appeared to be busy wi

  • Who broke Slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:10PM (#11551139)
    OK, who broke slashdot? The comments are messed up big time for me: all AC and from random stories. It's even weirder than Slashdot normally, which is pretty scary.

  • Another idea for a fun project (Score:4, Funny)

    by dkleinsc ( 563838 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @12:24PM (#11551315) Homepage
    Determine the person at the center of the open source society, using a Erdos-style numbering scheme. e.g. Joe Blow worked on sendmail with Jane Smith who worked on zlib with RMS gives Joe Blow a RMS Number of 2.

    Then just find the lowest average number, and that person is the center of the open source social structure.
  • The title suggests the possibility of this new book: Opensource Society And Its Enemies. Instead of Plato, Hegel and Marx, who will be criticized in this new book?
  • I know the guy's role is sociological, not technical, but I get worried about how much confusion reigns in free software.

    One can reuse code in any language. It is source code availability that enables that, not C++; even OO in general seems to conduce to reuse but frequently leads to problems such as the weak base objects.

    C++, with its huge complexity, is a handicap -- Java and C# are still complex but at least they try to be a little bit simpler, not to mention definetly better things such as functional
    • I really fail to see how C++ is an "arcane" language. And I really fail to see what was so "confusing" about KDE's license. It was mostly GPL and LGPL, with Qt being licensed first under the QPL and commercial-licence and a bit later under QPL, GPL and commercial license. Seriously, how is that "confusing"?
      • >
        I really fail to see how C++ is an "arcane" language

        Perhaps not being a native English speaker I misused the word -- I meant a language you need to be a language lawyer to be effective in.

        >
        I really fail to see what was so "confusing" about KDE's license

        See why Debian was unable to distribute KDE...

        • See why Debian was unable to distribute KDE...


          If Debian had problems with KDE, it really is Debian's problem. I don't think that KDE's licensing has ever been "confusing". Don't try to blame Debian's problems on KDE.
          • >
            If Debian had problems with KDE, it really is Debian's problem.

            No, Trolltech Qt's license wasn't compatible with the GNU GPL. Go inform yourself before replying.

            • Funny, KDE used it, and they were using the (L)GPL. How could KDE use Qt (with TT's endorsement in fact) if Qt was not compatible with KDE's license? And numerous other distros shipped KDE without any problems. And how was _KDE's_ licensing consfuisng? It was (L)GPL. What's so confusing about that?

              Like I said: Debian's problems are Debian's problems.
              • >
                How could KDE use Qt (with TT's endorsement in fact) if Qt was not compatible with KDE's license?

                That is it, they couldn't. It took years to make Trolltech change Qt's license to something GNU GPL-compatible.

                • That is it, they couldn't.

                  Yes they could. Or as the original KDE-announcement (from 1996) says: "Since a few weeks a really great new widget library is available free in source and price for free software development.".

                  Obviously Qt could be freely used for free software even back then. And KDE did just that, and TT had ZERO problems with it. Hell, they endorsed it! TT changed their license because some people started whining about it. But KDE (which was GPL-licensed) had been using it for quite some time

    • Hey, a troll on /. I can't believe it!

      The kernel is written in C, Gnome in Objective C, KDE in C++; there's a reason all large-scale projects (correct me if I'm wrong but atm I can't think of any well known 2-3 million lines+ project in Java/C#) use "arcane" languages

      And KDE is (L)GPL, Qt is GPL (among others) and it's been that way for years now I really don't see what you're talking about

      • >
        The kernel is written in C

        And suffering, see how progress slowed down and Linus found himself unable to produce stable kernels in 2.6.

        But yes, C is a lot less arcane than C++

        >
        Gnome in Objective C

        Gnome is plain C. And yes, Objective C is quite less arcane than C++

        • Gnome is plain C

          Not really, they wrote their own Objective C look-alike.

          C++ is one of the most popular languages out there; to call it arcane just because you don't like it is unfair. Yes C++ offers lots of possibilities to screw things up but it's also one of the most powerful languages. If you do a C++ project it may be more important to think about the structure of the program before you start hacking and to be more careful about the details than with Java but KDE got that right (And a good IDE can he

          • >

            they wrote their own Objective C look-alike.

            You don't know what you're talking about. They didn't. It is just OO-like functions you access in plain C.

            >

            C++ is one of the most popular languages out there

            So popular everyone spends loads of time trying to fix it, and it grows and grows...

            >

            restarting flame wars about programming language and license that were settled years ago because both sides realized that they were stupid is a bit weak.

            I criticised the claim you need C++ to reuse

  • Confused (Score:3, Interesting)

    by webhat ( 558203 ) <{slashdot} {at} {specialbrands.net}> on Wednesday February 02, 2005 @01:54PM (#11552329) Homepage Journal
    It seems like everytime I read an article it's another social comentary on the structure of F/OSS, what's up with that?

    It's strange how at one time the F/OSS community is a marginalized group under attack from every large company who thinks it's destroying their market share and now it's so important that everybody and their dog is writing about how wonderful the development structure is.

    I'm not saying it's not wonderful, but I'm not saying it is either. Then again it seems that everybody and their dog is saying that too.

    Oh, and on the comment: "I think that a democratic election is better than a dictatorship."

    Is that a dig at Bush or a dig at Linus? Personally, and some research back me up on this, I think that dictatorships are sometimes needed to get the ball rolling. Then once the dictator gets too big for their boots and there's a revolt. In the case of Linus he elected deputies to help him with the leadership role.

    Here's a quote I borrowed under the GFDL, from Wikipedia:

    Edmund Burke:

    "I cannot help concurring [e.g., with Aristotle, inter alios] that an absolute democracy, no more than an absolute monarchy, is not to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government. They think it rather the corruption and degeneracy than the sound constitution of a republic."

    See now I'm a F/OSS social commentary writer too... ;)

    BTW, the original confusion, see subject, came from the fact that I didn't see the obligatory OSTG warning in the message, it's almost as important and as much a part of /. as the jibes about Will Wheaton in the story above.
  • He didn't talk about a very interesting question: How many of the KDE contibutors work on KDE as their day job? Or more importantly: how much of the KDE codebase is a work of people as their day job?

    In the case of Linux, I think currently all of the most important contributors (who, on the whole, are responsible for almost all of the incoming core code) are now getting paid for their work on Linux (at OSDL, Red Hat, SUSE, IBM etc.). The same is true for Mozilla (Mozilla Foundation, Oracle, IBM, and now, fa
    • He didn't talk about a very interesting question: How many of the KDE contibutors work on KDE as their day job? Or more importantly: how much of the KDE codebase is a work of people as their day job?

      It's a vanishingly small number. It gets larger if you include KDE work done in spare time by Troll Tech developers paid to work on Qt, but even so it's overwhelmingly a volunteer effort.

  • Everyone wants to know how to mass produce Open Source Software projects, but they all want it in an "Starting Open Source Software Projects For Dummies" book.

    No one's writing one of those, because understanding social organizations is something that's not best left to "social scientists. There's no mention in the article of mathematical modelling, or anything else that would mark him as a serious student, it's just an opinion puff-piece that happens to mention KDE.

    There's a lot of work out there that's

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