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Jon Dron replied on the discussion topic Looking for advice: OER software for creating tests- Roland Treu replied on the discussion topic Looking for advice: OER software for creating tests
- Jon Dron replied on the discussion topic Looking for advice: OER software for creating tests
- Roland Treu added a new discussion topic Looking for advice: OER software for creating tests
- Jon Dron commented on a bookmark Reddit no longer (quite) open source
- Viorel Tabara commented on a bookmark Reddit no longer (quite) open source
- Jon Dron bookmarked Reddit no longer (quite) open sourceComments
Indeed - a nice metaphor. Open source needs patrons! All software is pretty much like art (or at least craft) and, like art, there are some pretty draconian laws in place about what you are allowed to do with it.
Though I do like Reddit and use it for serendipitous discovery quite a bit, I don't resent Reddit's decision. It probably makes good business sense and, anyway, there aren't that many people that actually want to run a clone of a pretty rough-and-ready system (Reddit's value is its communities, not its software), especially when there are vastly superior open source tools performing a similar job like Discourse available. It's just a bit sad that something vibrant has been taken out of the system and that the world has become a bit more closed as a result. The Reddit algorithms are (currently) not particularly great but it is really important to know what they do and how they do it, and useful for those seeking to build better variants. That information may be hidden in future, and that's not a good thing in what is, by some measures, the most popular open discussion site on the Internet.
Jon Dron September 5, 2017 - 5:12pm
- Viorel Tabara commented on a bookmark When IRC may not be enough. Maybe?
- Viorel Tabara bookmarked When IRC may not be enough. Maybe?Comments
- Viorel Tabara bookmarked Hackers vs Crackers
- Viorel Tabara published a blog post What does Xah Lee have to do with PostgreSQL?
- Viorel Tabara commented on a bookmark What is open source? — Open Words
- Jon Dron bookmarked What is open source? — Open WordsComments
Based on the number of software released under a variant of the GPL versus any other license shows that FSF was actually quite successful. Here's a count of the top 10 licenses used by packages making up my Fedora 24 install:
omiday ~ $ rpm -qa --qf "%{license}\n" | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail 31 Public Domain 34 ASL 2.0 39 LGPLv2 74 GPLv2 84 GPLv3+ 124 GPL+ or Artistic 187 BSD 234 MIT 319 LGPLv2+ 358 GPLv2+Also, from a total number of software packages:
omiday ~ $ rpm -qa | wc -l 2205
more than a half is licensed under some kind of GPL:
omiday ~ $ rpm -qa --qf "%{license}\n" | grep GPL | wc -l 1475A full Elgg package is also licensed under GPL. A reference to The GNU/Linux FAQ by Richard Stallman is a good resource for understanding why "free" is important.
Money wise, there is definitely less to make with free and open source software. In both free/open source and proprietary cases the "product" is made once, however in the latter case it is then sold millions of times. Take Microsoft as an example. The question to ask is whether increasing the profit margins benefits the society.
With regards to women participation, it is worth mentioning that at least in the Linux world there is no shortage of support: FSF, Arch, Debian, Fedora and many others are all supporting this initiative.
A more elaborate discussion could make it into a chapter for the already discussed Open Source course at AU.
Viorel Tabara August 3, 2016 - 11:54pm
- Viorel Tabara bookmarked FreeIPA
- Viorel Tabara bookmarked Endless OS/Computer
- Viorel Tabara bookmarked Teaching Linux to speak
Loading Open Source Software
It's comes down to how much money they want to make vs how needed their product is. Some projects operate based on donations, while others start offering additional services or training. I've never used Reddit much, it just never appealed to me. On the other hand I will continue supporting the GPG and Enigmail project, for example. There are plenty of open source projects that continue to thrive 20 years later. In some ways open source is just like art.
Viorel Tabara September 5, 2017 - 4:45pm