RE: [Jeff Covey @ Freshmeat] We Are Losing the Browser War

From: Josh Cohen (jcohen@avogadro.com)
Date: Wed Mar 28 2001 - 14:25:56 PST


Hey man, I love EFNET. I bow and salute.

I also love and use many products of the Open Source Movement.

I just dont think that the market can be "turned over" to
open source at this point. The assumption that people
will act to control the market in any way better than it
is today has yet to be proven...

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Tom WSMF [mailto:tomwhore@inetarena.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 08:25
>To: Josh Cohen
>Cc: 'Stephen D. Williams'; Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de; Karl
>Anderson; Adam@knownow.com; FoRK@XeNT.CoM
>Subject: RE: [Jeff Covey @ Freshmeat] We Are Losing the Browser War
>
>
>On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Josh Cohen wrote:
>
>--]If the market was "controlled" by open source, we'd all be
>--]at the mercy of a bunch of power hungry 13 year olds just
>--]like EFNET.
>
>You can say lots of stuff about EFNET but the damn thing has
>been up and
>working for the last decade plus.
>
>YEs the EFNET admins are mostly a bunch of egotripping aholes
>of the first
>degree, but the truth of the matter is it works DESPITE their actions.
>
>I do have to agree witht he picture of the top level of OSS, and yes it
>does have a top level. Its rife with infighting, egotripping and
>destructive eleteism. BUT but but.....The projects themselves
>are the real
>deal.
>
>Scrap off the top level of nimrods who are making a living off of doing
>OReiley shows and the Geekcircut and you find some gifted,
>taleneted and
>very cool people making the whole thing happen. Projects like GIMp and
>Lynx and a plethora of little one off projects .. these far
>outwiegh they
>craload of dung that gets excerted by Stallman and the other
>figureheads
>who make OSS seem to be in practice more intensley rigours than a old
>Soviet Style reeducation camp. ("you must realize the right
>thinkingness
>of the cause comrade, you must purge yourself of all external
>forces that
>would take away from the cause, you must dedicate your mind
>and action all
>towards the cuase..etc etc")
>
>Heck, if you open your scope just a bit more to folks doing
>projects that
>dont nessecairly open thier source you will find projects being done
>around the tech that have truly taken on a life of there own.
>
>Winamp?
>Apple is now even jumping on the mp3 wagon , a wagon not created by but
>greatly exapnded by Winamp. Winamp did for mp3's what Ford did for
>gasoline. Justin and Tom over at nullsoft really gave the
>world something,
>and then rather than resting on thier laurels put out
>Shoutcast and then
>sneaked out Gutella.
>
>What about the hordes of apps like pkzip, little apps that did
>one thing
>really really well. These apps didnt come out of big corps but were
>hatched by small teams or lone coders.
>
>In the end , for me, OSS is less about the availability of the
>code as it
>is the accessability of innovation.
>
>Innovation, its made from peeeeeeeeeeeeoeeeoooople.
>
>
>
>
>
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