Open-source firms seek safety in numbers

[Christopher Chan]

On Monday, December 27, 2010 02:11 PM, Michael Haney wrote:

> In the past 10 years since the year 2000, Linux has evolved very
> rapidly.  And, its not just Linux but many other OSS projects, and
> that evolution is speeding up.  Microsoft cannot keep up with that
> pace.  It took them nearly 10 years to develop another operating
> system, and it was a flop.  They took a few more years to revamp it
> and fix its problems, and finally got it right.  Many Linux distros
> evolve at different rates, but mostly they change dramatically every
> year, and in some cases every 6 months.  As I said, Microsoft cannot
> keep up with that pace, their corporate culture and bureaucracy isn't
> geared for it.  Google, as huge as they are, has a corporate culture
> that is geared for allowing rapid innovation, and they worked hard to
> maintain that swiftness and not become a low lumbering beast like
> Microsoft is now.
>

OSS speeding up? What, the flop that is GNOME? And how long did it take 
for the Linux kernel to get a proper fsync/fsyncdata implementation? Oh 
wait, these are big projects, with millions of lines of code. They even 
have politics! Just like corporate entities! Wow!

Sorry, both commercial and open source suffer from the same problems. 
The difference being mostly 1) cost to you, 2) server share 3) developer 
mindshare and 4) desktop share where the last two are intertwined and 
presents a chicken and egg problem. Quality varies on both sides and I, 
therefore, have chosen to discount that in the list of differences.