The whole intro section is weirdly selective about what to include and weave into a single narrative. I lived through that time. There were a lot of other things going on that paint a different picture. Not that the description is definitively wrong or anything, it's just that it is very like the fable of the blind men and the elephant. It's not wrong to say an elephant is like a rope, but it is incomplete to the point of being deceptive.
The odd rant about open source makes quite a tenuous leap to the meat of the article, which I enjoyed much more and didn't have any particular issues with. "An elephant is like a rope, now let's talk about the fascinating physiology and ecology of the hippopotamus, a roughly elephant-shaped animal."
Ok, that's unfair, the opening and the Rogue history are more related than that. But note that the latter is explicitly called out as an "exception that proves the rule" of the former. Yet "most A are B, so now let's look at a rare example of a not-B that is an A" only supports the opening thesis insofar as you explain or at least make the point that `A & not(B)` is uncommon and illustrate it with your example. Simply giving an example of where your argument doesn't hold, well... it just undercuts the argument.
Anyway, it's not the author's responsibility to write an article in a way that works for me. And I certainly don't want something complete or wikipedia-like. It's just... odd. It talks about how open source failed to live up to its expectations. That relies on an overly literal acceptance of those expectations, because in my mind it has vastly exceeded those expectations. People were indeed overenthusiastic, but even then not many were claiming it would take over everything.
Is a developer scratching their own itch a fundamentally flawed approach that will never produce software that takes its users' actual needs into account? I would argue that they are reasonably independent from each other. Someone scratching an itch may very well be able to maintain a coherent design, or something may start with itch-scratching but then attract the involvement of designer-architects, or the reverse: itch-scratchers may join in a more "designed" project once it starts to show promise and be useful enough to trigger its own itching. On a related note, the purist "cathedral vs bazaar" interpretation is largely a myth. The bazaar pretty much always evolves some level of organization, and cathedrals are staffed with people, people who are often motivated by itch-scratching no matter what the high priests ordain.
I am sympathetic to the argument that programmers tend to produce things to be consumed by other programmers. I am also sympathetic to the argument that once a program gets to the point where it is useful to other people, it has a strong tendency to get absorbed into an organization that makes it usable by a broader audience. Is that a failure of open source or a success? It depends where you draw the finish line.
Blender, Godot, Firefox, GNOME, WordPress, GnuCash... it's not like there aren't counterexamples out there.
And the plain fact that nearly everything is now built off of an open source base, and that base is steadily moving up the stack, makes me suspect the "open source can never handle X" argument has a limited shelf life.
Two of your examples begin with GN, which, of course, is a reference to GNU (explicit in the case of GnuCash) and thus a reference to the Free Software movement. Which the author of the piece rather noticeably neglects to talk about at all.
I agree that the open source section was a bit strange and not really necessary for the article's actual focus - when I read it I immediately thought this will create a completely avoidable flame-war.
The whole intro section is weirdly selective about what to include and weave into a single narrative. I lived through that time. There were a lot of other things going on that paint a different picture. Not that the description is definitively wrong or anything, it's just that it is very like the fable of the blind men and the elephant. It's not wrong to say an elephant is like a rope, but it is incomplete to the point of being deceptive.
The odd rant about open source makes quite a tenuous leap to the meat of the article, which I enjoyed much more and didn't have any particular issues with. "An elephant is like a rope, now let's talk about the fascinating physiology and ecology of the hippopotamus, a roughly elephant-shaped animal."
Ok, that's unfair, the opening and the Rogue history are more related than that. But note that the latter is explicitly called out as an "exception that proves the rule" of the former. Yet "most A are B, so now let's look at a rare example of a not-B that is an A" only supports the opening thesis insofar as you explain or at least make the point that `A & not(B)` is uncommon and illustrate it with your example. Simply giving an example of where your argument doesn't hold, well... it just undercuts the argument.
Anyway, it's not the author's responsibility to write an article in a way that works for me. And I certainly don't want something complete or wikipedia-like. It's just... odd. It talks about how open source failed to live up to its expectations. That relies on an overly literal acceptance of those expectations, because in my mind it has vastly exceeded those expectations. People were indeed overenthusiastic, but even then not many were claiming it would take over everything.
Is a developer scratching their own itch a fundamentally flawed approach that will never produce software that takes its users' actual needs into account? I would argue that they are reasonably independent from each other. Someone scratching an itch may very well be able to maintain a coherent design, or something may start with itch-scratching but then attract the involvement of designer-architects, or the reverse: itch-scratchers may join in a more "designed" project once it starts to show promise and be useful enough to trigger its own itching. On a related note, the purist "cathedral vs bazaar" interpretation is largely a myth. The bazaar pretty much always evolves some level of organization, and cathedrals are staffed with people, people who are often motivated by itch-scratching no matter what the high priests ordain.
I am sympathetic to the argument that programmers tend to produce things to be consumed by other programmers. I am also sympathetic to the argument that once a program gets to the point where it is useful to other people, it has a strong tendency to get absorbed into an organization that makes it usable by a broader audience. Is that a failure of open source or a success? It depends where you draw the finish line.
Blender, Godot, Firefox, GNOME, WordPress, GnuCash... it's not like there aren't counterexamples out there.
And the plain fact that nearly everything is now built off of an open source base, and that base is steadily moving up the stack, makes me suspect the "open source can never handle X" argument has a limited shelf life.