Open Source vs. Commercial Software

[Jason Spatafore]

On Monday 24 October 2005 18:56, Alan Dayley wrote:
> Jason,
>
> I am a bit confused by your comment.  Two parts of it seem contradictory
> to me.
>
> Jason Spatafore said:
> > Then you are not an innovator, you are a maintainer. I bet you'd rather
> > learn
> > the quirks of the existing software, and keep those "solutions" to
> > yourself
> > (Proprietary software maintainer), rather than figure out a way to get
> > rid of
> > those quirks by collaborating with others (Open Source Software
> > Developer).
>
> This sounds like you are saying OSS developers are innovators, not
> maintainers.  Then you said,

The most innovative thing ever is the pursuit of perfection, not the art of 
diversion. 

Surely you can see how an OSS Developer fits all roles. But they are not 
"maintainers" in the sense I meant, which was a "Just reset the system and it 
will work again" approach to things. When I said "maintainer", I didn't mean 
"maintain the code" but more along the lines of "maintain the environment the 
buggy code runs in."

> > Who wants to invent "new and exciting" stuff? No, Open Source isn't about
> > providing "all the features in the world" (that's MS's department with
> > Windows Media Edition, etc), it's about perfecting the current stuff and
> > making it stable.
> >
> > Until people realize that Open Source isn't about "new and exciting" but
> > more
> > along the lines of "more stable and easier to use", the Open Source
> > movement
> > can't attach itself greatly to the IT market....because most of the IT
> > market
> > has been FUD'ed.
>
> which sounds like the opposite of innovators.
>
> I'm probably just picking-nits here but this contrast caught my eye.

Are they good nits? 

-- 
Sincerely,

Jason Spatafore
http://www.spatafore.net
Linux+ Certified Professional