Why not Linux?

[Sy Ali]

On 9/3/06, Evan Leibovitch <evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> The general approach in the world of FOSS is to make the best possible
> software possible, regardless of the progress of any particular brand X.
> I heartily advise folks here to read interviews with Linus Torvalds to
> see how irrelevant Microsoft can be to the development process.

It seems to be that most FOSS is done to scratch an itch, and only the
serious developers begin to think about their audience, and donate
their time to the public by making their software "the best it can
be".  These are the hero developers which have made Linux etc. so
popular.

A whole lot of software is "complete crap" to everyone but a select
few, because it fulfills a niche and was not expanded (which would be
"bloat" to some).  And so without that expansion it has not been given
the chance rise to achieve more of its potential.

I've also seen cases where the software was intentionally hobbled
because what could be considered "its potential" remains outside the
scope (and funding) of the project.  Mediawiki is my big example for
that one.  Add security?  No, that's not the wiki way!


And you're right.. from what I've seen, most of the outside world is
entirely irrelevant to members of a hero development team.  Some of
them seem to only surface when they need to wrestle with strange
things.. like including proprietary binaries in their distribution, or
codec issues.  These hero devs just keep having fun doing what they
do, and the rest of us get to reap the rewards of their efforts.
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