(Off Topic ) Open Source: The Model Is Broken ??

Alan Cox alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk
Sat Dec 6 22:18:23 UTC 2008


> There is a problem peculiar to the free/open source world in that poor 
> quality versions of things have no reason to ever go away.  That takes 

Which actually isn't a problem but a feature. Stuff survives if someone
cares enough to keep it going - which if you are the business who happens
to be the one using that code is good news as you can keep it alive.

Its also for the mainstream not true that poor stuff lives. Even good
stuff that isn't the best or the most commonly used often gets clobbered
by network effects. In fact you will find that each given application
space is almost always dominated by one or two contenders with the
remainder lost in the noise.

Those contenders also change over time.

Alan




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