Linux and Religion

Thu Feb 8 15:28:16 UTC 2007

I haven't read what the Icehouse affair is, but I think this is a good 
analogy.

Personally, I think that open source is great - i use nothing but open 
source software ... well, except adobe reader and my ati drivers. And 
there is definitely a huge number of people that will flame on about how 
linux beats microsoft hands down, or whatever... the truth is that bugs 
are inherent in any software...

I could go on and on about how great open source software is actually, 
and love showing people how great linux works on my laptop, or on any of 
the the embedded devices I use it on ;-)

What I don't do very often is say what I find lacking in open source 
software.

The idea is always lingering in the back of my head. There is 1 main 
issue with open source software - or at least the 'bazaar' model of 
software development vs 'the cathedral'.

That is, as the number of independently designed software systems 
increases, so does the inefficiency of the system as a whole. Code is 
re-used less - in ram and also in the design, people often re-invent the 
wheel, and subsequently introduce bugs into the system that could 
otherwise be avoided, and so on. That is probably a theorem somewhere in 
  mathematic logic, proven by Church or Turing or Godel, or Hilber, or 
... one of those guys.

However, there are obviously factors working against that.

1) the developer/user community decides on what or who is best in each 
case - i.e. more often than not, there are excellent programmers working 
on the linux kernel, or Xorg, etc. and they are there because their 
talent has been appraised well.

2) non-developers are quite often highly valued simply for their 
excellent, non-technical opinions on aesthetic, performance, or useability.

3) most obviously, if software is garbage, people tend to use it less.

Still, if a theorem's a theorem, then in theory it should be 
full-standing ... well, unless your theorem proves that it itself is not 
proveable.

The linux kernel developers have done a fairly good job in refining 
their own tree to be more and more efficient as well.

One could point out how great the Mac os X is, in terms of it's user 
interface / appearance, as well as what's running under the hood. I 
can't say much about the existence of Mac bugs, because I don't own a 
Mac. But what I can really appreciate about their software, is that it 
is very much 'unified', from an outward appearance. everything is fairly 
scrutinously tweaked, and you can tell that it was designed with the 
purpose of 'functioning _excellently_ as a whole'

For those reasons, I really give a thumbs up to the BSD folks, and very, 
very, very rarely to the 'cathedral'.

I find also that, using open source software in my work and contributing 
back to it as much as possible, sometimes I don't really have enough 
time to ensure that the stuff I give back is as efficient as I would 
hope it to be. Other times, I wish that all of the applications that I 
use, which for the most part are independent, had a tighter collective 
design, rather than being a 'patch-work quilt' ...

Anyway, these are just things that I can remark on...

but then again maybe I just have a religious conflict ;-)

Or maybe I'm just software agnostic :)

~/Chris

John Wildberger wrote:
> What has Linux to do with Religion?. Nothing !
> And yet, I find myself thinking of how much the mindset of Linuxers has in 
> common with religious goals.
> Let me list some of the similarities as they come to mind:
> 
> -My religion is better than yours. My distro is better than yours.
> -Any religion other than mine is evil. Any OS other than Linux should be 
> shunt.
> -Close your mind to the doctrines and merits of other alternatives.
> -Spread your believes by any means, regardless, if it is asked for or not.
> -Be disparaging and disruptive of the endeavors of those outside your own 
> brand
> 
> I could go on for more, but I am sure you get the drift.
> The recent discussions on the "Icehouse affair" highlighted some of the above.
> For the life of me, I cannot understand why people cannot accept the simple 
> concept of open source software in the spirit it was conceived. 
> Let the community work together to achieve the best result without being 
> slowed down by petty jealousies.
> If you should find a particular distro to do the job, then be glad and tell 
> others why you think so, without forcing it on them or diparage other 
> distros.
> The effort of spreading the gospel of Linux has a lot of merit for for those 
> who derive some financial gain by the increase of the number of Linux users. 
> For me it has the benefit of getting more information published, which in 
> turn will help the development of better distros. So, more power to those 
> people who weathered the cold in front of the Icehouse to get some Linux 
> publicity.
> 
> John 
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