Older blog entries for radar (starting at number 0)

Well, seeing as I can't post articles here yet, I guess I'll have to post my opinions on the open source arrogance matter here.

It seems really strange that the conversation has been curved from a disscussion about arrogance in open source to more of an arguement over "who's the better innovator". I'm not sure what the purpose of the boasting war is, but bickering about it doesn't help the discussion about the issue at hand.

I have been working with both M$ and open source software over the past 8 years. While most of my development experience has been on the Microsoft side, I have managed to dive into some open source projects over the past couple years. I tend to take more of a silent role in the community as it has been more interesting to observe the actions of others than to get heavily involved.

Anyways, my point here is my experiences with open source software have lead me to both good times and bad times. Some of these bad times have been the direct result of arrogance over software projects in general. I think that the whole software industry has a whole "arrogance" thing going when it comes to who they don't want to work with and why they won't work with them. But then again, if it wasn't for arrogance, nobody would make any money, right? :)

I was reading an article the other day on Business 2.0 (The Penguin Takes Flight - http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,45454,00.html) and reading this discussion reminded me of the work on the Mono project. Here is a place where all arrogance has been put aside to help bring a technology to the open source world that will allow users to bring more applications to a wide variety of different platforms. Now I know that there are a lot of the people in the open source world who think anything that has to do with Microsoft is like dealing with the devil. I can't say my experiences with Microsoft products have been all good, but I can't say they have been all bad either.

I think the open source world is making steps towards moving past the "geek" world and moving towards doing what has to be done to provide consumers with innovative technology at a price they can afford. With the recent surge of Linux distribution providers working towards bringing Linux to the corporate desktop, these projects are putting all of the past behind them to help consumers enjoy the experience of their software. Look at the decision RedHat made to make both their KDE and their Gnome desktops behave the same. There was a lot of controversy over whether this move was a good move on their part. They went against the views of the open source GUI groups (which could have been perceived as arrogant views) and did what they had to do to help bring the desktop to the corporate user.

Is there arrogance in the open source world? Yes, there certainly is. There is arrogance all over the software world. The main thing that needs to be remembered that the software industry in general needs to keep an open mind and determine whether what their doing is right for their project or whether their decision is hindering the progress of software.

And that's my two cents worth...

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