[ox-en] Novell's attempt to distribute effort
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 08:55:22 +0200
Hi list!
While we are discussing whether effort can be distributed by some
abstract super structure in a peer production economy Novell tries
exactly this. Here are a few translation snippets from an article
about the ideas of Novell's CTO Jeff Jaffe and reactions from the Free
Software community:
Source: http://www.computerzeitung.de/loader?path=/articles/2[PHONE NUMBER REMOVED]_ha_CZ.html&art=/articles/2[PHONE NUMBER REMOVED]_ha_CZ.html&thes=&pid=ee54f3c7-0de1-40f5-bb23-2cfdf022aee5&page=1
Novell wants to extend its Suse Linux to a general infrastructure
platform and for this needs the help of the Open Source community.
Though Jeff Jaffe, chief technologist of Novell, does not want to
command ["vorschreiben"] the army of volunteer programmers he want
to manipulate ["eingreifen"] by moderation. His message: "If you
want to develop something then why not doing something useful for
which there is big demand." The Linux community finds this
embarassing ["empört"] and refuses this.
I think if thinking from a general, societal perspective Jeff Jaffe is
right: There is demand for such a general infrastructure platform and
the effort to take is certainly worthwhile. In that sense Jeff Jaffe
expresses the societal need Christian talks about (unless his book
says totally different).
The community refuses that, however, luckily Open Source communities
can not be controlled well from outside, emphasizes Elmar Geese,
head of the Berlin based Linux Verband. [...] The operating system
around Linux gained its strength by not being driven by the strategy
departments of big companies.
And Geese also points to the solution:
Who wants to have something to sell it to their customers may not
expect it to get it for free. Often specialists from the projects
are bought by small or medium enterprises which add the missing
enterprise features.
See also
http://www.computerzeitung.de/loader?path=/articles/2[PHONE NUMBER REMOVED]_ha_CZ.html&art=/articles/2[PHONE NUMBER REMOVED]_ha_CZ.html&thes=&pid=ee54f3c7-0de1-40f5-bb23-2cfdf022aee5&page=1
for the interview (German).
Grüße
Stefan
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