Just as the unprecedented global wealth gap between the super rich and everyone else proves that trickle‐down economics doesn’t work,
The premise here doesn’t make sense since it ignores the technology adoption life cycle and the difference in how closed and open source are released. There’s a gigantic funnel of created open source projects and very few that make it into general use, but most projects don’t have 40+ hour a week, multiple person teams and that’s what they’re competing against. Most projects target a specific need, not specifically enthusiasts, but because of the amount of technical difficulties involved in getting up and running, need enthusiasts to build them and file down the sharp corners on projects.
The big difference between closed and open source projects, is that the refinement for closed-source projects happens in-house and at QA before anyone sees the product. Enthusiasts do a lot of work that QA would otherwise do, and also a hell of a lot of the bug fixing that devs would do too.
the glaring lack of open source adoption in the consumer space indicates that trickle‐down technology isn’t working either.
Firefox, Chromium, Blender, GIMP, Python, OpenJDK, VLC, Apache, GCC, Clang, LibreOffice. Most widely used open source isn’t flashy, they just does what they’re supposed to do and get out of your way. Most also don’t have marketing budgets and succeed on merit alone.
How many non‐enthusiasts do you know who use Linux
I see many people using Android which uses a lot of open source and also a Linux kernel.
(and who don’t live with an enthusiast who set it up for them and fixes it for them when something goes wrong?)
Most people I know can’t fix any of their devices on their own, especially business people on Windows.
Consumers have access to very advanced technology–which started as something difficult to use, and was later refined–but it sounds like they aren’t using the technology that the author wants them to use, which is different than the grand proclamation of the article’s title.
The premise here doesn’t make sense since it ignores the technology adoption life cycle and the difference in how closed and open source are released. There’s a gigantic funnel of created open source projects and very few that make it into general use, but most projects don’t have 40+ hour a week, multiple person teams and that’s what they’re competing against. Most projects target a specific need, not specifically enthusiasts, but because of the amount of technical difficulties involved in getting up and running, need enthusiasts to build them and file down the sharp corners on projects.
The big difference between closed and open source projects, is that the refinement for closed-source projects happens in-house and at QA before anyone sees the product. Enthusiasts do a lot of work that QA would otherwise do, and also a hell of a lot of the bug fixing that devs would do too.
Firefox, Chromium, Blender, GIMP, Python, OpenJDK, VLC, Apache, GCC, Clang, LibreOffice. Most widely used open source isn’t flashy, they just does what they’re supposed to do and get out of your way. Most also don’t have marketing budgets and succeed on merit alone.
I see many people using Android which uses a lot of open source and also a Linux kernel.
Most people I know can’t fix any of their devices on their own, especially business people on Windows.
Advocacy doesn’t work.
Consumers have access to very advanced technology–which started as something difficult to use, and was later refined–but it sounds like they aren’t using the technology that the author wants them to use, which is different than the grand proclamation of the article’s title.