More MS, Less Talent In Open Source's Future

alphadogg writes "The open source industry in 2008 will be marked by more news out of Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and other big IT vendors, less start-up funding, more M&A activity, and an increasingly serious talent shortage, according to Raven Zachary, open source research director for The 451 Group. One example of the talent shortage will be people with expertise in the Tomcat open source Java servlet middleware from the Apache Foundation. 'There are 25 or so core contributors to that project,' Zachary said. 'Over the past four or five years that number has stayed virtually [unchanged]... but the growth of Tomcat has been astronomical.'"

Talent shortage?

[RandoX]

Maybe talented coders like to get paid better.

Re:Talent shortage?

[wwmedia]

u mean not all programmers like to give away their work and answer support questions for free with their open source software?

Re:

[wizardforce]

there's nothing in gnu saying you can't indirectly make money from software, you just can't redistribute code that is derived from gnu code in a propietary way. Canonical I hear makes about 50 million a year through support and indirect revenue sources from Ubuntu

Re:Talent shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Unfortunately, support and consulting are arguably the least desirable way to make money in this sort of industry. Ideally, you'd sell product and get only positive feedback to improve it. No support. No dumb questions. No issues.

Companies that make money from support contracts are, in my opinion, doing the least favorable work. It's certainly not sexy and for every dollar you earn, you have to work an amount directly proportional to that. There's not much concept of exponential growth. In other words, your income per hour flattens out much faster than with a product-based model.

Re:

[yason]

Companies that make money from support contracts are, in my opinion, doing the least favorable work. It's certainly not sexy and for every dollar you earn, you have to work an amount directly proportional to that. There's not much concept of exponential growth. In other words, your income per hour flattens out much faster than with a product-based model.

It pays to do work that nobody else wants to do.

Further, I don't think there will be "exponential growth" (or scalable sales...) in the future softwar

Re:

[KutuluWare]

Clearly, the answer is to produce and support an open source product until it becomes wildly popular, then systematically introduce subtle but severe bugs that force everyone who runs your software to pay for your support contracts :)

Re:

[eggnoglatte]

This must be the first time I have heard somebody call the MS business model unsustainable. Sure, it isn't very nice, but unsustainable? How exactly did they end up in that dominant market position for close to the last 2 deceades, then?

Only one way.

[Benanov]

>This must be the first time I have heard somebody call the MS business model unsustainable. Sure, it isn't very nice, but unsustainable? How exactly did they end up in that dominant market position for close to the last 2 deceades, then?

Illegally.

(Remember? Convicted Monopolist.)

Re:

[eggnoglatte]

Illegally

Well, that is the part where I said "not very nice" (OK, I admit I am prone to understatement ;-)

Still doesn't mean it isn't sustainable, since they have sustained it for 2 decades, and it doesn't look like they are facing any particularly dire consequences from their illegal activity any time soon. Financially they are doing well enough, even if double-digit growth rates seem to be a thing of the past. Anyways, they are doing much better than, say, General Motors, and even General Motors isn't going to

Re:

[wizardforce]

You could have said the same thing about Apple years ago and now look at them. In Microsoft's case, their last OS was by many accounts an engineering and planning failure, only their market position saved them on this one. It is suspected that Microsft's failure in managing their code development teams is crippling their ability to actually do anything, take a look at Vista, 6 years of development for that piece of trash. Unless they start cracking on actually producing something it's going to bite them

Re:

[Reverend528]

there's nothing in gnu saying you can't indirectly make money from software

There's nothing in the GPL saying you can't directly make money from software.

Re:Talent shortage?

[kdemetter]

so don't use GLPv3 . There are plenty of other open source licenses . It's not because the FSF makes a new one that you have to use that. There is no good or bad license in there , it just depends on your needs . I don't think there's a talent shortage , it's more like a shortage of new ideas . Basically , if you think of an application you could use , there's a good chance it already exists . And it's a lot more fun working on something you helped create , than on improving something someone else wrote .

Re:

[sumdumass]

That is actually the domino effect they were looking for that would hopefully push everyone to the GPLv3 license. Think of it as a forced upgrade. Remember all the talk about Getting Novell and Microsoft because the FSF would move everything to GPLv3 as soon as possible and MS nor Novel would be able to escape the reach of the GPLv3?

And yes, it is forced because you have the option of continuing to use your product and having it become incompatible or having to fork what ever library that moves and take on

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

if they use that code to hinder the modification of modified gnu source code than yes GPLv3 would prevent that, if their code was a seperate entity that in no way affected the modification of modified gnu code then there is by design, no problem. Tivo allowed you to view the source but not to modify it for your own use on their hardware, that would be considered anti-ethical to software freedom. Then again there's nothing preventing said company from using BSD code or writing their own code for the job no

Re:Talent shortage?

[RHSC]

I prefer to get paid by the semicolon...just so long as I don't have to code in VB

Re:

[morgan_greywolf]

I like to get paid by leading whitespace -- syou know, paces and tabs (with tabs counting as at least 4 spaces). But then again, I'm a Python programmer.

Re:

[RHSC]

Getting paid by the parenthesis while coding LISP is good too

Re:

[Daniel Phillips]

Getting paid by the parenthesis while coding LISP is good too

Truly.

(print (eval (eval (eval (quote (quote (quote (quote payme))))))))

Re:

[MenTaLguY]

Absolutely. But Open Source gives you the freedom to do things the way you want to, and it's a good way to interact with a population of other talented coders, both of which are generally hard to get consistently in the commercial world. Both are things that talented coders care about a lot more than the folks who are just in it for the money, clocking in the hours and punching in the first code that dribbles out of their brain.

It's more a question of having the spare time for it.

Re:

[ClosedSource]

"But Open Source gives you the freedom to do things the way you want to, and it's a good way to interact with a population of other talented coders, both of which are generally hard to get consistently in the commercial world."

Sure, because a group of people who all get to do things the way they want to do it are known to be more talented and accomplished than an organized team creating products for paying customers.

Re:

[MenTaLguY]

You don't believe that talented people gravitate towards environments which offer them creative freedom?

Whether Open Source is more or less productive is a separate issue (I don't believe it is more productive in the short-term).

Re:

[ClosedSource]

"You don't believe that talented people gravitate towards environments which offer them creative freedom?"

I don't think that talented people are unique in their desire to have it their own way, no. Furthermore, a group of people who all get to do whatever they individually want to do, don't make a great team. That's true for both open and closed source development.

Re:

[MenTaLguY]

I'd submit that creative freedom is more important to talented people, however. Speaking anecdotally, although all levels of talent are represented, I've encountered a much higher proportion of very talented programmers in Open Source than I have at work in the commercial/proprietary world. One of the reasons I'm as active in Open Source as I am is that I've found it's the best place to find talented programmers who I can learn from.

I also don't mean to exclude the necessity of cooperation, but frankly in

Re:

[ClosedSource]

"I'd submit that creative freedom is more important to talented people, however. Speaking anecdotally, although all levels of talent are represented, I've encountered a much higher proportion of very talented programmers in Open Source than I have at work in the commercial/proprietary world."

I guess I've never seen a significant relationship between the desire for creative freedom and talent. I guess I've met too many people who crave creative freedom while those around them are rolling their eyes behind th

Re:

[Reverend528]

Maybe the talented coders just don't like Java. It's entirely possibly that a shortage of tomcat coders will correspond to a surplus of rails developers.

Google trends seems to agree with this theory [google.com]

Re:

[toddhunter]

Yes I expect to see a lot of web servers written in rails soon....

Re:

[nostriluu]

Top marks for your use of persuasive statistics, and the data to back you up is right there on the page!

Are we about to go off the rails?
Danger On The Rails: Railroad won't talk about hazardous chemical cargo
Off the Rails: Big Oil, Big Brother Win Big in the State of the Union
Train breaks world's speed record on rails
Clinton rails against Bush border plan
US destroying Tomcat fighter jets to keep parts from Iran

See, 5 mentions of Rails and only one of Java!

Definitely much more compelling than http://www.tiob [tiobe.com]

Re:

[PrescriptionWarning]

not all open source is derived from hobby work ya know... some of it is designed by programmers of 'your' generation because it was a part of what they did for pay.

Re:

[argiedot]

Agreed. In fact, the poster child Linux was mostly written by people paid to write for it.

Re:Talent shortage?

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

not all open source is derived from hobby work ya know

Perhaps, but you're missing his point. Here's another example:

• Wake up around 6 am. Eat, get dressed, and get physched up for the fun fun hour plus drive via major congested roads to get to work by 9am. That pre-leave time also includes helping get my Son ready for School (breakfast, persistant reminders that he's running late, etc.).
• Work 'till 5pm (usually closer to 6 pm).
• Fun fun hour plus drive home. Home around 7 pm.
• Eat dinner, help Son with homework, spend a bit of time with him before his bed time.
• Spend sometime with Wife and un-wind a bit (and "un-wind", if you catch my drift...)
• Shower, go over meeting notes, maybe catch the the earlier late news).
• 10pm Head to bed.

Where in there am I supposed to find time to sit in front of my machine spending hours debugging code for an OSS project? I'm not saying that I don't contribute, once in a while I have sometime on weekends to submit a bug report (with some same code usually - but not always), or something small like that, but by far and large, us "older" (I'm only 34, but...), "Family Guys" simply don't have the time the younger people (in High School or College) do.

That was his point, I think.

Re:Talent shortage?

[dvice_null]

> Where in there am I supposed to find time to sit in front of my machine spending hours debugging code for an OSS project?

"We" have the same amount of time what everyone else has. It is just how we want to spent it.

For example I moved to very close to my current work place when I started working there. It takes about 10 minutes for me to get to work and I don't even have to use a car for that. I save probably 10 hours every week compared to you. That is something like 500 hours every year (+ I save a lot of environment and money at the same time).

I like to think that my skills are too valuable to be wasted in traffic jams every day. I would ever turn down a job, if I couldn't move close enough to it. You obviously have different priorities, which are probably better than mine. But you really can't claim that you would have less time than anyone else. (I also have a wife, child, job and I spent my free time on Slashdot and with open source projects.)

Re:

[maraist]

I haven't even gotten to the kids part (but that's coming). I willfully chose to live an hour away from work because the city life was not how I wanted to die the rest of my life. At lest in the hour ride, I can listen to NPR and 'relax', and culture myself, but YMMV. The main problem that many people (probably outside of the tech industry) face is social commitments.. Some people join groups, some do community service, personally I'm learning a foreign language to communicate with extended family.

But th

Re:

[Almahtar]

Also, some of us can contribute to open source projects as part of our work. Using a library in the software you're working on, and find yourself wishing it could do X, Y or Z for you? Implement it in their code rather than yours and ship the change back.

You'll be writing the code either way - may as well share it.

that's a very 1980s US viewpoint

[Trepidity]

Actually living in cities as opposed to way out in suburbia is becoming more popular again than it was in the 80s, and it never really went out of style in most of the world (in Europe and Asia in particular).

Re:

[quanticle]

Actually living in cities as opposed to way out in suburbia is becoming more popular again than it was in the 80s

As far as I can tell, that's due to two factors. First, you have young college grads who want to be part of the social scene provided by the cities. Second, you have retiring Baby Boomers, who can afford to move into a small condo as they don't have kids, and like the greater availability of services in the city. There's still no trend showing that families with children are moving back into the cities. Finally, GP has a point about city schools. In pretty much every metropolitan area in the US, you'

Re:

[QuantumG]

I have no kids and I work from home.

Re:

[einhverfr]

What makes you think that programmers don't get paid to work on FOSS?

BTW, if you know Perl and/or PLPGSQL, and want to work on FOSS business software (especially accounting software), drop me a line and attach a resume (preferably in PDF format or plain text). My business is looking for people we can pay (it would be either a relocation or a work-from-home arrangement depending on what works best for everyone).

Re:

[bfields]

Where in there am I supposed to find time to sit in front of my machine spending hours debugging code for an OSS project?

During that block of time that ran from 9am to 5pm?

If open source is what you're interested in--enough so that given some free time you'd consider working on it just for fun--it'd be smart to look into that possibility seriously.

OK, I can understand why people wouldn't: even if in the long term it'll be 9-5, in the short term you'd almost certainly have to put in extra time for the

Re:

[bfields]

It is truly unfortunate that programmers of my generation aren't as prone to participate because they bring a much broader and deeper experience if for no other reason than years of working in the industry.

And probably you aren't the only person thinking that. Surely there are managers out there looking to hire people to work on Linux/Apache/whatever-floats-your-boat who share that opinion. Sounds like a good way to market yourself.

Though don't think you'll be as unusual as all that--plenty of people

Quantity != Quality

[dintech]

Tomcat is an excellent product and a gem of the open source community. Just because there are 'only' 25 core developers working on it doesn't make it inferior in any of the other offerings out there. I'm not sure throwing more developers at it would necessarily make it better. See, Mythical Man Month for details...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ.

I tried to install Tomcat the other day for a rehosting consulting job I was tasked with.

The initial part of the install went fine, though the documentation seems to be written by someone from another planet. Very strange verb tenses, grammar, poor train of thought throughout (very jumpy).

Anyway, after I got Tomcat up and running, I realized I needed a connector to hook it into Apache. The docs were kind of sketchy on this (yes, they brought it up, but not in an organized, linear manner. It'

How is this a troll?

[Pengo]

I actually agree with the AC.

I've been running Caucho's resin as an alternative to Tomcat for many years and it's been an outstanding product with none of the headaches I've had with Tomcat. Resin is GPL'd with very good documentation and optional low-cost commercial support.

Just because it's from apache doesn't mean it's the best for the job at hand. I find more often than not, people use tomcat because they believe that there are few options available, let alone easier and more elegant open source solut

Re:

[LDoggg_]

The AC's post wasn't a troll, the moderator was trigger happy or misunderstood his point.

He was right, tomcat used to be a complete pain in the ass to connect to apache web server. Thankfully things have gotten much easier.
Also, on Fedora 8 you can have this all automatically working with the new open source JDK.

Re:

[LDoggg_]

As of apache 2.2(web server, not tomcat) mod_jk is obsolete and this has gotten a whole lot easier. Take a look at mod_proxy_ajp.

It's now just one simple proxy_ajp.conf file. Plenty of options for advanced configuration, but a simple configuration could be done in one line like "ProxyPass /examples/ ajp://localhost:8009/jsp-examples/"

What you need is *not* a *core* developper.

[DrYak]

That's the typical opensource situation where whom you need is NOT a core developer.

25 developers are a pretty good team to constantly write, re-write and improve the inner workings of tom-cat. In fact, there are a lot of commercial project that don't have that much developer 100% dedicated to the project. And as GP poster pointed out : "Mythical Man-month" explains us why this team doesn't need to grow much more because of the added inter-communication and training of newcomers overhead.

What a lot of newcomers into the OSS world fail to realise, is that there is a lot beside "writing code" that is important for an OSS project to be useful. There's, for example, a very strong need for artist to make the visuals (UI design, themes, other graphics) in order to avoid having the OSS project look like some 10 year old ass-ugly Athena interface with a cryptic UI based on a non obvious metaphor.
And, like in your case, projects also needs people with good writing skills, to write nice documentation, specification, HOW-TOs, and other guides, because frankly there are a lot of OSS projects out there that are technical marvel from a technological point of view but whose documentation consist mainly of a a big dump of code comments and function names and where, in fine, the old classic formula "Google + {error message} = posts in newsgroups" is the only way to get decent help.

People usually fail to realise it. For them Open-Source mostly remind them of complex C/C++-code and they think that GPL is only for programmer good at writing code. And thus a lot of people aren't motivated to contact a project and start helping because they think they don't have the necessary coding skills. Whereas in fact, even with no competences at all in programming, they could be critically important with their artistic, litteracy, or other skills. (Even things like helping organising appearances of the project at major Meetings and Expo can help because it bring attention to the project, and that requires skill that are neither coding nor artistic).

Yes, The Free Documentation Sucks

[Skjellifetti]

But that is why books like this [amazon.com] exist. You'll need to buy two. I've never found a topic where a single book covers everything I needed to know about that topic. Buying three will usually put you past the point of diminishing returns.

Re:

[El Lobo]

Not only that. More MS programmers participating on OS projects will also automatically mean more talented programmers. There is absolutely no contradiction in that.

Re:

[remmelt]

The entire point of OS is that it doesn't matter that there are "only" 25 developers.

If Tomcat's growth is astronomical, there will be people/businesses that want more features (or the 25 would be enough after all.) The thing is, it's open! They can hire someone to do that work. This is not feasible for most companies perhaps, but it's exactly what large corporations would (should?) do. Need better documentation? Pay someone to write it for you. Note that I'm not saying: "You can write it yourself." I'm say

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why?

[Gotung]

Why does an open source project magically need more programmers because it has become popular? What's wrong with the 25 guys that have obviously been doing a kick-ass job with Tomcat? Throwing more bodies at it will just lead to bloatware.

Re:Why?

[ByOhTek]

I think they were stating it's size and complexity as the rational, not the popularity.

Still, yes there are 25 core contributors to Tomcat, but what is the total contributor size in a per-mont/per-year breakdown for the server.

And what percentage of the updates are being done by the core developers? If the proporition of the development done by the core team is half of what it was the year before, at any given point, but about the same absolute amount of work - then the development on the project is still growing exponentially, even if the core team remains the same size.

Re:

[cromar]

25 developers is a lot. Maybe it's just me, but 25 developers would seem to be enough for most large projects. The real question is "how many developers dos it take to screw in a light bulb?"

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Q. How many BASIC programmers does it take to change a light bulb?

A. 10 to GOTO the hardware store, 20 to screw in the bulb.

Re:

[dekemoose]

This is true. I was actually fairly surprised to find out the number of developers that my company actually has (or had before we were acquired). A few good developers is all that any good project/product seems to need. Adding more seems to simply result in more problems, not more progress.

Re:

[plague3106]

One; to call fascilities and have them come out and do it.

Re:

[Almahtar]

But if it has more users it NEEDS MORE MAN MONTHS!!!!
- some PHB

Good use of resources?

[MikeFM]

If you can accomplish great things with a few core programmers that is called being effecient. Adding more programmers to a project usually makes it worse rather than better. Open source allows many developers to make minor changes, as they have need to, but doesn't change the fact that only a few core programmers are needed for most projects.

I don't see the number of open source programmers shrinking at all. If anything, I expect to see many new projects taking shape and a few catching fire and shaking up the industry. It's better for many small projects to be seeded so that a few can grow into new major projects. There'd be no point in adding more and more developers to existing projects.

Growth of developers vs. growth of users

[Iphtashu Fitz]

Just because one of these groups increases in size doesn't necessarily mean the other one has to. I've worked for fairly small companies where the number of developers didn't change dramatically despite the rapid growth in end users. Sure, more developers may be hired if you start developing new products, dramatically increase the feature base of the existing product, etc. but for projects that are relatively stable and have slower growth cycles there really isn't a need for a growth in the number of dev

Re:

[dargaud]

Look at slide 7 on this presentation [web.cern.ch] (sorry, pdf), titled "Software is a long-term commitment". It shows very well, the development curve of software projects with interesting variations between projects.

As a side note, I almost wet my pants seeing that Fortran is finally dead and buried.

MS...

[PeterBrett]

What does Multiple Sclerosis [wikipedia.org] have to do with open source software?

Re:MS...

[teknopurge]

Chairs.

Everyone knows that.

From TFA

[Silver Sloth]

"Microsoft is still trying to work out its strategy," he said. "Ultimately, I think we'll see them embrace open source much more."

Now I'm worried.

Re:

[Yetihehe]

Don't worry. I think open source is bigger than MS and when MS will try to embrace it, it will expand and extinguish MS.

Re:

[Almahtar]

<karma to burn> <cough> Miguel de Icaza </cough> </karma to burn>

Number of maintainers falls as project ages

[xant]

High-quality products general stay flat or lose developers over time without losing any quality. I have no idea whether tomcat is a high-quality product or not, but the core of it probably requires very little maintenance now, leaving the "core" developer circle free to work on edge features. There are an unlimited number of those for any given project, but the urgency of those edges falls off rapidly as a project ages, so it's rarely the case that a project needs to grow in developers just because it's getting older. Such projects usually split into separate projects with their own functionality core.

Also, it's ridiculous to extrapolate this process and make a statement about all open source. Developers are rarely destroyed, converting their energy into entropy. Instead, they are simply attracted to new products that need developers.

Finally, the talented open source developers pool will only grow, as it always has. If Microsoft is hiring people to work on open source, then those people will be new talented open source developers.

Re:

[cnettel]

A "product" like Tomcat is useful by being a platform. As such, new standards and other developments outside of the product makes a greater implact relative to, say, a game. Many Java-related projects (i.e. projects that not only are written in Java, but support other stuff in Java) went through significant changes for the 1.5 release, for example. Just keeping a project of this type and quality alive requires quite a bit of work.

Read the article

[imgumbydamnit]

In fact, it alludes the increasing pervasiveness of open source in businesses as causing developer shortages, and the increasing role of the big players in open source projects. These are signs of the success of the open source model, folks.

I don't see it

[Wylfing]

First: who the F cares about announcements from Microsoft regarding open source projects, unless they are actually contributing.

OK, that out of the way, I can't see how a shortage in one project is a shortage overall. OS is about coders scratching an itch. I have contributed to projects but only when it was something that impacted me personally, and I wanted to see it fixed in a hurry. If the number of users of a project grows astronomically, that's great, but it has no bearing on how many coders participate if nobody feels an "itch" they need to scratch. Maybe the software is good enough for end users, and they feel fine about it.

Those coders aren't "gone." They're just off scratching some other itch, is all.

Re:

[einhverfr]

OS is about coders scratching an itch.

Actually it is about coders of varying motivations sharing code. Some are trying to deal with personal annoyances. Others are dong work for customers. Still others are doing work for employers.

Figure out how to monetize it

[athloi]

Fact: Programmers need money to survive and are generally underpaid.
Fact: People can work only 40-60 hours a week without burning out and writing crap code.
Fact: Programmers have lives outside of the code.

For Open Source to survive, it's going to have to figure out how to compete in a market economy.
Part of that means making better code, since some OSS projects (OpenOffice) are total garbage full of bugs.
Part of it means a path by which the average OSS application can monetize itself and pay its developers.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, the 90's is calling and asking for their FUD back.

Re:

[cbreaker]

Greetings, Microsoft Shill!

Fact: Programmers are not janitors.
Fact: Programmers are almost always compensated very well. (Where the shit don't they?)
Fact: Who cares about "lives of programmers outside of the code" in this context

Programmers get paid. You're a retard if you think it's all developed for free.

I don't find OpenOffice to be total garbage and full of bugs any more then the alternatives.

You put your bullshit out there like it's fact because you must be paid by Microsoft, or you must have a ve

Re:

[wwmedia]

with an alexa rank of 152 and involved in running a site of comparable size that uses adsense i estimate sourceforge makes 2,000 -> 3,000 $ a day from adsense

Re:

[JamesP]

Fact: Programmers need money to survive and are generally underpaid.
Fact: People can work only 40-60 hours a week without burning out and writing crap code.
Fact: Programmers have lives outside of the code.

For Open Source to survive, it's going to have to figure out how to compete in a market economy.
Part of that means making better code, since some OSS projects (OpenOffice) are total garbage full of bugs.
Part of it means a path by which the average OSS application can monetize itself and pay its developers.

Maybe SourceForge needs to distribute profit from its AdSense earnings, I dunno.

Funny...

Most places I see the kind of problems these 'facts' show are closed-source shops.

Oh yeah, another 'fact' for you. Open Source projects kicks closed-source projects in the groin in software best practices, construction techniques, usage of tools, etc, etc

Re:

[einhverfr]

Ok, this is mostly FUD, but there are some reasonable issues here.

Active Directory. Yes, there is OpenLDAP, but it takes a lot of third party plugins on various machines to get compatible with it. For large amounts of users (10,000+) scattered around geographically, there is just no other product that can do this, and that tools (like self-service password retrieval, or hooking smart cards) are available for. Pretty much every OS out there can hook into Active Directory and use it for user access. Too many user objects in one domain that it bogs down? Create a subdomain, and do trusts.

OpenLDAP + Kerberos has some advantages and some disadvantages compared to ActiveDirectory (for example, service principle handling in AD is horrid). Personally I think LDAP, H.323, and all other Open Systems Interconnect-descended protocols tend to be the wrong choices for TCP/IP networks. However some people like things like this.

Exchange or Notes. There are just no solutions available at all to handle a medium to large company's mail, messaging and calendaring infrastructure that can scale, replicate, and cluster as well as these two commercial apps. Both also have extensive device support (cellphones, Blackberries, PDAs). Not just an available IMAP server, but a thorough client, so IT can remotely validate security requirements mandated by contracts or corporate regulations.

We will get there. It is not a matter of not keeping up but because the solutions which do exist are not q

No method applies in all cases

[athloi]

It's true: no method applies in all cases.

Where F/OSS does well is in finding a software need of most computer users, and making a product to match. Although not all of these are open source, I'd consider the following great successes: PuTTy, EditPad, Opera, WinDiff, ActivePerl, WireShark, AirSnort, shttpd, Nero, Apache.

Where it does not work is in areas where centralization, and its proportionate reduction in expense per square foot of research and development and customer feedback integration, is benefici

Monetizing it is no challenge

[einhverfr]

My business is doing well.

Fact: Customer-centered businesses succeed.
Fact: Customers need things and will pay.

All that is really required is to find the arrangement where both sides win.

[sarcasm] Wow. That is so hard.... [/sarcasm]

Who posts this crap...

[tomq123]

Some "Tech Analyst" from some "Open Source Research Group" (451 Group???) says that Open Source is on a downward trend because Tomcat only has 25 core developers. How is this news. Tomcat has done extremely well over the years with only these 25 core developers. Sounds like a very successful Open Source project to me.

Also, I think the rise in the use of Tomcat can be attributed to the move away from huge App Servers (WebSphere, Oracle, WebLogic) and rise in smaller more nimble apps using Struts and Sprin

Huh?

[snoyberg]

'There are 25 or so core contributors to that project,' Zachary said. 'Over the past four or five years that number has stayed virtually [unchanged]... but the growth of Tomcat has been astronomical.'"

I don't get it. There's an open source project run by 25 or so people that's had "astronomical" growth, but since they aren't bringing in new people there's a lack of talent? If they're doing well with those 25, why does the team have to grow?

25 is about 15 too many.

[Organic Brain Damage]

The assumption that a bigger team is an indicator of health is insane. Large teams in software development spend most of their time NOT WRITING CODE and NOT DEBUGGING CODE. They spend their time in meetings trying to figure out how to get 25 people or 50 people to all work together. If you have a really big job, like making a modern spreadsheet product, your best bet is to figure out how to partition it into a series of jobs that can be handled more or less independently by separate 5 person teams.

Re:

[chochos]

It doesn't say that they're the same 25 guys... it just says the number of core developers hasn't grown. Maybe a new guy came into the team and after a couple of months another guy got hit by a bus, so the number stays the same... another new guy comes in, and someone other guy has a kid and leaves the project, etc.

Re:

[Wylfing]

If they're doing well with those 25, why does the team have to grow?

Precisely. Raw numbers of coders don't mean anything. And now for the real reason for my reply...

In Soviet Slashdot, a beowulf cluster of Natalie Portman imagines you

Oh, please let that be true.

Re:Huh?

[Shadowlore]

Because that is how management thinks. I'll break It out for you.

Management types want more people to manage because it gives them a means to argue they deserve more money. Their management wants to see more money first. SO if your product is successful and growing, your management expects to be able to bring on more workers so they can be considered more important and worth more money. Think of it as HR bloat just like feature bloat in an application.

Since these "analysis" articles are done by people who are trained in, experienced in, or familiar with that model that is what they expect of everything. It's the notion that success brings growth. They are blissfully ignorant of the small world concepts, or how real work gets done, or how software is different from building a Model T, and only see the "business" side - especially since that is what pays their salary.

The number of Toyota Camry repair experts...

[iamacat]

Also remained unchanged despite a big growth in the number of cars on the road.

J2EE is J2EE and there is no reason people have to specifically learn Tomcat in order to create and deploy applications. Production websites generally do not run on Tomcat but rather on Oracle OC4J/IAS or one of other commercial application servers. Why would people become experts in something they would only use to debug some starter projects under netbeans?

I bet the number of Linux experts has significantly grown during the sam

Okay, time for the car anology

[zappepcs]

How many automobile manufacturers were there at the beginning of the 20th century? How many do we have now? Since the number of manufacturers has changed little at all, or even shrunk, can we assume that even with astronomical growth in the use of automobiles, that there is something wrong with the automotive industry?

While that doesn't quite fit perfectly, I think it makes a point. If your 25 coders are putting out code good enough for astronomical use growth, then no more coders are needed. Every OSS project does NOT have to turn into a MS look alike to be successful. I think the author needs to re-evaluate their definition of success here. The hummer vehicles are successful as business goes, but there is not one in every driveway in North America yet. I have some very successful code, and there are 3 users total. It hums along nicely, 24/7 doing it's thing and all the end users are happy. It does not have astronomical growth, but it is SUCCESSFUL.

Why does F/OSS HAVE to compete with MS? That's not really rhetorical. For most of what I do, OO is absolutely great. I have no need to run and load MS Office. To me, OO is successful. I don't have to drive a Silver Ghost to have a great car. Tomcat and Apache are very successful at what they do because (IMO) MS sucked at that job and offered no real competition.

MP3 players are a successful market... not because of the superior sound quality, or because they were made by MS, but because they do their intended job very well. Some better than others, but all do the job. In the software world, it seems rare that there are more than two options for a given product precisely because of MS (not counting Mac products). If you only had a choice between an H1 hummer and a Mitsubishi Galant, or a BMW motorocycle... which would you drive?

The insistence that software must be like MS is at best absurd, and at worse, it's the worst thing that could happen to the F/OSS software industry.

Re:

[statemachine]

If you only had a choice between an H1 hummer and a Mitsubishi Galant, or a BMW motorocycle... which would you drive?

I'd go to the lot across the street where people are driving away with free tanks.

Got served a WebSphere ad with this story

[Graftweed]

Is /. using targeted ads now? I was reading this story using the RSS feed and the annoying embedded ad image proudly (and weirdly) announced:

"Using Tomcat but need to do more? Discover WebSphere Application Server."

Re:

[Almahtar]

Mine was for American Express. TALK ABOUT WEIRD.

Just goofing with you of course - I think your situation was just a fairly entertaining coincidence.

Tomcat?

[etnu]

People who use Tomcat tend to be enterprisey types (which perhaps goes without saying; using Java to solve web problems is like using a chainsaw to shave), so it's no surprise that few of them are willing / able to contribute to the project. The kind of domain knowledge required to create an http server and to do the wiring necessary to make things easily configurable is pretty far removed from the typical day to day work of these engineers. I think this is kind of true for most open source projects. The f

Network World FTL!

[Jonboy X]

He also said he anticipates Microsoft becoming increasingly busy in open source, since it "has a vested interest in making sure open source works well on Windows." However, he noted it could be well into the next decade before we see something as dramatic as an actual Linux distribution from Microsoft.

NetworkWorld: Your source for alarmist headlines, buzzword-compliant articles and wild speculation for over 20 years [networkworld.com]

Re:

[alphadogg]

Gosh, thanks for the new tagline. BobB, Network World

Boomer retirement will increase open-source devs

[gregor-e]

The much-predicted talent shortage arising from the retirement of the baby boomers may, paradoxically, swell the ranks of open-source coders. Open-source folks work for coin of the spirit (which is that same thing wage-slaves work for, ultimately, as they turn their coin of the realm into stuff they like). Anyway, retired folks get itchy for something to do, and no longer need to earn a living. A lot of them will still have viable coding skills, and I expect we'll see a groundswell in open-source develop

Anyone want to give me a job then?

[xaxa]

In July I'll graduate with a 2.1 (or better!) masters degree in Computing from Imperial College London (which, in case you don't know, is ranked very highly for computer science). I'm currently looking for jobs based in Europe, preferably in a very large city, preferably London; free software would be excellent! :-D

Email me :-). (Or email my University! rsi at doc.ic.ac.uk is the careers person. Not enough interesting companies do this, but all the investment banks etc do -- I get at least one email a d

Re:

[xaxa]

British degree classifications:

The percentage boundaries are common, but can vary between universities.
* First-Class Honours (First or 1st) (70% and above)
* Upper Second-Class Honours (2:1, 2i) (60-70%)
* Lower Second-Class Honours (2:2, 2ii) (50-60%)
* Third-Class Honours (Third or 3rd) (40-50%)
* Ordinary degree (pass)
* Fail (no degree is awarded)

Many jobs will advertise for "2:1 or above", there's a big perceived difference between a 2:1 and a 2:2.
The university makes a lot of difference too, but I'm sure t

Re:

[xaxa]

It depends how hard the questions set on the exam are. Hardly anyone (perhaps no one!) will be expecting above 90% on any of the exams I'll be taking in July, they're set so as to go beyond everyone's knowledge and present a challenge.

Re:

[xaxa]

It's a 4-year undergraduate degree, I get "MEng Computing" at the end of it. If I'd only studied Computing here for three years I'd get "BEng Computing". I don't know how the one-year masters degrees are graded.
My final year is essentially a masters, all my courses are options for one-year masters students and I have to do a similar amount of work for a project etc.

"25" isn't some magic number...

[HalAtWork]

Just because there are 25 programmers tied to the project doesn't mean that they are the only ones who make contributions to the project via bug reports, patches, providing documentation, and it doesn't even include those who work on the modules, does it? Maybe the core of Apache doesn't need to change so quickly because it's pretty stable feature-wise, and modules incorporate most new features? Did you see how long it took to go from Apache 1.x to 2.x? I'm not talking about how long it took to release,

err

[Vexorian]

So, some guy is predicting the future of the whole open source by reading 25 devs in tomcat as a bad sign. This is failing to impress me, sorry.

Just a thought here

[Allnighterking]

But as a Sr. Admin Iget a little tired of the assumption by so many that "If you don't write the code you are talentless" Has any one cosidered the idea that there comes a time when adding code no longer improves the product much. Some of these products really are about as big as they can get without imploding, there may only be 25 contribs, but how many does something as mature as Tomcat need?
A lot of the new talent will be of a different kind. In the 70's Computer Engineering was 80% theory/math and 10

Try freelancing.

[Almahtar]

Companies spend about double your salary on you if you're an employee (after taxes, benefits, building rent, etc), so they're willing to give you more money as a freelancer. Consequently you can also charge for each and every hour you work - if they want 80 hours a week from you by God they'll pay you for 80 hours.

Top it off with the fact that you can work from home or whatever random cafe you want.

Programming doesn't have to be a sucky job.