Comments on: Open source is made of people http://www.jessicaledbetter.com/open-source-is-made-of-people/ Web Developer Wed, 10 Apr 2013 03:55:53 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 By: Jessica http://www.jessicaledbetter.com/open-source-is-made-of-people/comment-page-1/#comment-11685 Jessica Sat, 20 Aug 2011 13:54:50 +0000 http://www.jessicaledbetter.com/?p=681#comment-11685 Thank you for the compliments and posting your thoughts! Yes, when people discuss and work together on common goals, some amazing things can happen. Though, I totally understand how competition can spur along amazing things too ;) And, yes, we need that shirt! We have at least two customers right here. Thank you for the compliments and posting your thoughts!

Yes, when people discuss and work together on common goals, some amazing things can happen. Though, I totally understand how competition can spur along amazing things too ;)

And, yes, we need that shirt! We have at least two customers right here.

]]> By: Cillian de Róiste http://www.jessicaledbetter.com/open-source-is-made-of-people/comment-page-1/#comment-11609 Cillian de Róiste Tue, 16 Aug 2011 08:46:27 +0000 http://www.jessicaledbetter.com/?p=681#comment-11609 Excellent post! First of all it reminded me of a funny site I came across recently about "Soylent Green Tea": http://sf0.org/Haiku/taskDetail/?id=794&big=1 ... but more seriously ... it also reminded me of how competition and communication between projects can sometimes be handled really well and respectfully and how really great things can come from it. A few years ago there was a massive proliferation of Python web frameworks and there was plenty of discussion about which was best etc. There were benchmarks and discussions about scalability, and as surprising thing happened. Some people started working together to create more fair and accurate benchmarks and realised how many common goals and opinions they shared and eventually three major frameworks (Pylons, Turbogears and Repoze) merged. Another thing that struck me after reading your post was how valuable directed and constructive public technical feedback is for everyone. I feel I learn a lot from this when it is done well e.g. on mailing lists. One final comment: something which I don't really understand is how there seems to be many people who feel that they are doing the FLOSS community a great service by picking out projects to ridicule and criticise. It is as if they feel they are doing investigative journalism and exposing some "fraudulent" project for claiming to be useful by its very existence (I'm thinking of the recent backlash against the Novacut editor project). I think that kind of criticism is fine for commercial products and services, but for FLOSS I feel it would be nice if people stood back a little and remembered, as you so eloquently point out, that "Open source is made of people". (I totally want that on a t-shirt!) Excellent post! First of all it reminded me of a funny site I came across recently about “Soylent Green Tea”: http://sf0.org/Haiku/taskDetail/?id=794&big=1 … but more seriously … it also reminded me of how competition and communication between projects can sometimes be handled really well and respectfully and how really great things can come from it.

A few years ago there was a massive proliferation of Python web frameworks and there was plenty of discussion about which was best etc. There were benchmarks and discussions about scalability, and as surprising thing happened. Some people started working together to create more fair and accurate benchmarks and realised how many common goals and opinions they shared and eventually three major frameworks (Pylons, Turbogears and Repoze) merged.

Another thing that struck me after reading your post was how valuable directed and constructive public technical feedback is for everyone. I feel I learn a lot from this when it is done well e.g. on mailing lists.

One final comment: something which I don’t really understand is how there seems to be many people who feel that they are doing the FLOSS community a great service by picking out projects to ridicule and criticise. It is as if they feel they are doing investigative journalism and exposing some “fraudulent” project for claiming to be useful by its very existence (I’m thinking of the recent backlash against the Novacut editor project). I think that kind of criticism is fine for commercial products and services, but for FLOSS I feel it would be nice if people stood back a little and remembered, as you so eloquently point out, that “Open source is made of people”. (I totally want that on a t-shirt!)

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