| Wednesday, December 3, 2008 |
06:58 - Some nerds grow down
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/a-microsoft-veteran-embraces-open-source/
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Via JMH—it's news when a Microsoft veteran goes open-source. At least according to the Times.
However, I'm a bit skeptical that there's anything more to this than just a case of delayed adolescence. According to the article, Curtis only really took a hard look at Linux after he got bored and left Microsoft; while he was there, he just took his coworkers' word that it was crap.
And now he's full of insights like these, which wouldn't be amiss coming from a starry-eyed freshman whose roommate has just helpfully installed Debian for him on the gaming rig he brought from home:
“The key to faster technological progress is making software free,” he writes. “The difference between free, and non-free or proprietary software, is similar to the divide between science and alchemy. Before science, there was alchemy, where people guarded their ideas because they wanted to corner the market on the mechanisms used to convert lead into gold.”
He notes that there is an important parallel to the end of the Dark Ages, which came when society began to freely share advancements in math and science.
Oh riiiiight: closed-source software is like alchemy. Because before science came along, everybody got their gold from alchemists, who feared competition in their cornered market.
My God that's a moronic analogy.
I suppose it would be more accurate to talk about patent law and how it protects the secrets behind people's genuine and legitimate inventions from becoming commonly exploitable; but then it wouldn't have cool derisive vocabulary (like "alchemy" and "Dark Ages") to sling at a venerable and respected industry like commercial software. True, software patents are an iffy subject; but the concept of patents in general is sound, and has encouraged many an inventor to throw his life's savings into creating something that might make him rich and famous. One can only assume Curtis doesn't hold Edison in contempt for being an alchemist.
Okay, true, Curtis' trajectory has been an unusual one; most people these days form their opinions of open-source and proprietary software based on contemporaneous experience with both. But just because this dude is only experiencing Linux now after eleven years with Microsoft doesn't make his viewpoint any more insightful than—or indeed much distinct from—some college kid who got his first glimpse of the open-source world after a youth spent knowing nothing but Windows.
I'd like to hear what Curtis thinks of Linux after he's been using it on his desktop for five or six years.
Experienced software engineers in this day and age have plenty of seat time in front of software of all kinds, whether open-source or proprietary, and I would guess that the bulk of them understand that there are roles for both types in the future of the industry. Open-source does some things well, closed-source does other things well. I have maintained for a long time that server software is best suited to being open-source because it's infrastructural and just needs to serve a well-understood need, in a fairly rudimentary but totally correct way. People love to write to that need, and will do so for free, because often it's their own needs they're serving in the process. But consumer software, particularly multimedia-heavy consumer software, really desperately needs to be driven by a pervasive and entrenched culture of user interface design, and that's something you only get by paying people and paying them well. We've all seen what happens when open-source types—mavericks all—try to develop a user experience. Nobody can agree on which features to hide or simplify away or even on the overall vision, and without a hierarchy of command where design decisions are imposed from an overarching master plan (so that even if it's not the best possible execution, at least it's consistent), you either get a splatter of uncontrolled functionality, or splinter groups running off to do their own thing. Or both.
It's no great breakthrough for someone who's only ever been used to Microsoft software to suddenly discover Linux and go nuts over it. What would be newsworthy to me would be Microsoft learning to take a page from Apple and others who have embraced the open-source development model for those components where it makes sense, and recruiting seasoned engineers who are able to operate in both worlds, understanding the merits of both.
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Brian Tiemann
