Wow! I knew that there were Open Source Fanaticstm, (see just about any thread at Slashdot, but Closed Source Fanatics? That’s a link to an Opera discussion forums’ thread about open sourcing Opera.
Interesting how many people think that all OSS is bloated, and that anyone can just add code willy-nilly, which isn’t really true. I mean you can do that, if you want, for your own puposes, but most projects have a pretty formalized patching system (esp. the Linux Kernel ), so that isn’t a big problem.
Bloat isn’t either a OSS, or CSS, featue, it’s comes from bad sofware engineering, and it can happen in either closed or open source developing.
Opera is a fine browser, and I use it myself, but not as my default, right now, although I did until I found Firefox, back when I still used Windows. I must say that with Firefox being so slow on Ubuntu that I’m thinking about changing that. I’m hoping that the 1.5 release of Firefox will change that, and that it’ll get into Ubuntu sooner, rather than later, because I do love it for more reasons than it being OSS.
Well there are advantages to both OS and propriorty developing–I think that there are more advantages on the OS side, –and I use both types of software, because I use the best software that I can find on the system that I use, and , because that’s what freedom is all about.
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November 23rd, 2005 at 4:52 pm
It probably should be seen as a reaction to being browbeaten for years that Open Source cures cancer, and most of that thread degenerated into yet another Firefox vs Opera discussion.
A pity really, often Open Source makes sense (and many times it does not), but it doesn’t turn a bad product into a good one nor a good product into a bad one. There’s been too much religion on this topic, and Open Source doesn’t imply potluck programming. There have been plenty of awful Open Source projects and plenty of great and influental ones. As long as the formats and protocols are open and sane, preventing vendor lock-in, the awful software will fade away eventually.
November 23rd, 2005 at 5:01 pm
Thanks Jonny.
For those that don’t know. Jonny Axelsson is the Web Standards guy at Opera, and not a CSS Fanatic
November 24th, 2005 at 7:43 am
Actually I *am* a CSS fanatic, when CSS is short for Cascading Style Sheets…
November 24th, 2005 at 11:26 am
Heh
Guess CSS isn’t the best acronym for Closed Source Software…. but that’s another story.