When I first heard of deep-fried Twinkies, I remember remarking, “Now I’ve heard everything.”
When I first learned of bacon-scented air fresheners, I remember commenting, “Now I’ve heard everything.”
Mark your calendars, ladies and gentlemen, because today, July 1, 2008, I really, truly have heard everything.
As you may know, I write about technology and, often, open source software for a living. If you know me through the FOSS community, then here’s the long version:
Someone in the KDE community is of the opinion that no one should use KDE unless they plan to be a contributor. The money-quote from this misdirected soul is, ” KDE, like many other open-source projects, doesn’t really need users at all…”
If open source software isn’t your thing, then the short version of what this guy means is, “Regardless of the fact the software project he’s working on is, by nature, designed to be available to anyone, anytime, anywhere, at no cost, he don’t really want you to use it unless you plan to help further it’s goals.” In other words, accept his invitation for dinner, but you better plan on doing the dishes.
While I appreciate the naive desire to have everyone who uses KDE participate in some way, I am appalled at the idea that if you can’t, then you have no business using it. If a software project wants to narrowly define (or control the crap out of) who gets to use it, then slap a price tag on the box and put an EULA inside.
Why should I care about any of this? Well, for starters, this elitist attitude benefits exactly no one. How many people will want to join a group (the open source community or, more narrowly, this project), if they have to know the secret handshake and pass a test first? Hell, the open source community already gets a bad (and sometimes deserved) rap for being full of trolls, egomaniacs, and misogynistic creeps. Hey, I know! Let’s add snob to the mix! This whole idea reminds me of the nerds in high school who made fun of the jocks because they couldn’t spell high school. It’s just a way to elevate yourself into pretending to be something you’re not. “Hey, if you want to hang with us, you have to be as cool as us.”
Just grow up, already.
I make no bones about the fact that I do not use open source software exclusively, so why should I care so much about this issue? Because, even though I use all three operating systems, and a combination of commercial and open source software, I care about the philosophy of open source. I want to see it win, and win big.
Every day I read about things that occur in this world because people are power- or money-hungry. Every day I read about people who say and do selfish things with total disregard to the impact on the people and world around them. The open source community, for the most part, is not like that. It is filled with people who have taken the time to think about why the availability of free software is important to the advancement of third world countries, the betterment of educational systems, and the security of the underlying technology we’ve come to rely on — and do what they can to help. Over and over I’ve seen people put their heart and soul into an inanimate project and treat it as lovingly as a child, then give it away for free and ask for nothing in return (unlike Harris).
I will never pretend that open source software is better in every single case and use than commercially-created software. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. What the FOSS community has going for it is its members who are, for the most part, kind-hearted souls who see and read the same things I do every day and are still motiviated to do something in exchange for nothing save the feeling of doing something good and valuable.
Like Joe says in his post at OStatic, “An open source project without users is like a band without an audience, a restaurant with no customers, or a writer with no readers.” I really hope no one Harris knows ever paints a picture. He’d probably tell the artist to keep it under a sheet until someone offered to clean the paintbrush.
Posted by Lisa Hoover 
