Sorry for the late reply, I didn’t see this comment when you made it.

You’re making a good point that ultimately in an Open Source context there are limits to a purely “no-cost” development model. Back in the 90′s the speed of development in Linux increased when full-time engineers could be dedicated to it through the sponsoring hardware companies.

Canonical sponsors Ubuntu which is provided free so this impacts how many engineers can be dedicated. However, it’s worth remembering there are lots of positives to this type of development model because other companies and users can ‘co-develop’. In the case of Ubuntu this means that lots of software comes in which isn’t created or contributed by Canonical.

I think the deeper issues is one of popularity. Apple makes a certain amount of money from each user which it then uses a portion of to fund development. If Ubuntu was as popular as Apple then for every X number of users there would be Y number of Open Source contributors. This would make the engine of Open Source development that much bigger.

It’s probably true that as Ubuntu crosses-over to being more mainstream the proportion of users who would also co-develop (become contributors) would drop. Most people just want to use a technology, not co-create it. However, I think the general argument still holds: more users = more developers. Finally, as you pointed out, the other option is for users to ‘contribute’ through the traditional relationship of buying things which enables developers to be hired etc.

Thanks for the comment!

Steve

I’m sorry you’ve had problems with Ubuntu One contacts. The best approach is to have a look at the help section.

The rest of your question is more general and given that you’re familiar with Debian I’m going to answer this from an Open Source perspective. Explicitly, you are using an Open Source (FOSS) piece of software so as with all OSS you are part of the means of production. The relationship you have with OSS is different from the relationship you have with proprietary software that you paid for. As the adage says in OSS users have a choice, “Money for time, or time for money”. So when you have problems one set of options is to trade your “time”: getting involved in solving the problem though the Ubuntu Forums, AskUbuntu, Launchpad or perhaps even creating the code and contributing it to the project. The alternative is to trade “money”: that means paying for products such as support, or sponsoring development. Free software doesn’t alter the fundamental dynamic that someone has to spend their effort resolving a bug – so ultimately there are no free lunches.

Finally, I won’t get into this indepth here, but there are trade-offs to be made between stability and having the latest software – Debian is at the one end of favouring stability when compared to Ubuntu, you could also consider Ubuntu LTS releases which are every two years as somewhere in the middle.

Best of luck!

Steve

How can they deploy something like this, completely non-working, the web is full of people having problems, there are lots of confirmed bugs about this, and then do not care at all (apparently) to solve the issues?

I guess I will move to debian-stable soon, because I don’t want zillions of new features which don’t work and let me loose endless hours trying to resolve the problems, but I do need some essential features like a working address-book (btw.: there is a CLI-tool to export the addresses, why is it so difficult to associate a button to this in the GUI?). Ubuntu used to work fine in the past but now there is too much regression (stuff that used to work doesn’t work in new versions). I’d suggest to them to release less new versions but fix the current issues instead, because I think that most users think like similarly.

Thanks for the thoughts and the thoroughness of describing your position. I agree with you on many of the benefits of OSS that you’ve described. And, for any set of users/organisations there will be some variety in the reasons that bring them to OSS. However, I don’t agree with you about OSS in a business environment. It’s certainly true that if ‘risk management’ is your primary objective then continuing to pay for the devil you know is the safer option. But many businesses are under constant pressure to reduce costs, and there simply doing the ‘same old thing’ isn’t a good course. Moreover, there are lots of situations where risk management is not the primary objective, rather driving innovation is the more important item: and in this context I believe OSS has a lot to offer – Linux and of course Ubuntu!

Steve

Where does that statement come from? Is it quantified (how far does the UK lag), does it lag behind _every_ other country?, what is a “deployment”? what qualifies as OSS? Without some hard, rational and agreed information it’s difficult to argue for or against this statement.

Let’s accept for now that there are some places in the world where the proportion of Linux on peoples’ PCs is greater and the proportion of Windows is less, than these proportions in the UK. When measured purely by the number of instances.
What does that mean. Are the drivers for one or t’other driven by idealism, a recognition that one philosophy drives a more creative process, that people who use one will be intrinsically more valuable than the other or that they will lay the foundation for a flourishing IT industry because of it. Or does it just mean that some regions don’t have the money to spend on paid-for software when there is a zero-purchase-cost option available?
More importantly, is there any hard numerical evidence to back up the claimed benefits of OSS?

My background is that I have been a Linux user since the early 90′s and am writing this on an Ubuntu 10.10 box. I have a degree and background in the physical sciences. I am also a software professional – writing, supporting, debugging and advocating the stuff. As a consequence, therefore, I would like to see OSS succeed (though given the number of times I have been told “this will be the year of Linux on the desktop”, I find it harder and harder to muster much enthusiasm for it).

Why do I think OSS has a place in the world? Not for any of the reasons in the article. Firstly it seems to me that OSS allows the one user in a thousand with the skills, time and inclination to see examples of code written in the language of their choice. Once you have learned a language (computer or spoken) the single biggest factor in becoming proficient in it – i.e. being able to express yourself correctly and concisely, is to practice it. That’s what OSS does: it gives lots of examples of code and coding style for students to learn from (though it would be nice if OSS authors would occasionally add a comment or two).
The second thing that OSS does is to lower the barrier to OPEN standards adoption. I’m old enough to have known the closed-systems world (that Apple seems intent on reinventing) where every company had proprietary products, that did not inter-operate and therefore tied customers in to one manufacturers or another’s range of products: from the training the operators required to the spec. of the printer paper. History has shown us that these closed systems were a BAD thing. They reduced competition, slowed development, increased costs and permitted exploitation. It’s no surprise that computers became ubiquitous after the open-architecture IBM PC was introduced and millions of companies all over the world could write software to run on it’s published standard hardware and use it’s freely available APIs. I feel that if IBM had invented the app-store back in 1981 and used it to control and vet what software could be run on PCs, we’d still be in the world of Windows 3.1 – though maybe without the viruses we so enjoy today.
So. Those are the benefits I see arising from OSS. However they do not correlate highly with the examples cited of states and organisations that have adopted OSS to the levels Steve G would like to see in the UK. Even if we use the attributes of OSS in his own article, there is still a greater correlation with free cost/easy propagation/simple access than with the principles and virtues presented to us.

So there we have it. OSS is good. It has benefits for the users and it honks off the big players. The advantages it gives to poor countries helps them use computers. It gives budding programmers a large code base to examine and learn from. However in a corporate environment, where risk-reduction is more important than cost, standardisation is cheaper than diversity and security comes from having control, the case for OSS is far from made. The OSS world has never really been able to crack the business world – simply because the hobbyists and amateurs who create the vast majority of OSS simply don’t understand corporate needs. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself: if you were a CFO would you be more likely to sign off a $10M project you know nothing about based on a product called Maverick Meerkat or one called Windows Server?

Your point about teaching office skills rather than computing is sort of right. MS Office is still taught in the Majority of Schools and we are training (not teaching) Automated office skills using Microsoft Office. There are still far to few schools teaching with Open Source applications.

We should be teaching the fundamentals of How to use a Word processor or Spreadsheet not use app a too do task b.

“Computing is taking things apart and creating new tings, either physical or in software. The current culture doesn’t encourage this. It is only about consumption.” Is exactly were we are now, whats worse is in the past even Microsoft helped to a degree in teaching Computing self reliance is the past – look at the combined MS-DOS/ Windows 3.1 Manuals with sections such as putting network cards into your computer compared to the glossy brochure (if your lucky) you get now.

Barnie