The foregoing explains why open source has nothing to teach literature or indeed any artistic creation, since talent doesn’t scale as you give more and more developers check-in access to the version-control system set up for your novel. It further explains why one’s inability to hack an iPad means precisely nothing. Nobody needs to program an iPad to enjoy using it, except those who have no capacity for enjoyment other than programming and complaining about same.
This was the weekend those of us with high standards lost their remaining residue of patience for ideologues who hyperbolize about open systems without actually creating something people want to use.
The foregoing point about the limitations of open source development would be more convincing Apple was only one of many proprietary vendors creating beautiful, elegant, commercially successful, mostly closed systems. For better or worse, Apple is sui generis.
Good point.
ReplyDeleteAlso, isn't the iPad engine a mod of the iPhone OS? - which is a mod of Mac OS X - which in turn uses large parts of NetBSD and FreeBSD - both of which are Open Source software?
Seems kinda strange to bash Open Source when that's played a key role in the proprietary product you're all gaga over.
Yeah, and WebKit is a *huge* part of Apple's strategy, and they're a leading contributor as well to that project, iirc.
ReplyDeleteI grant you that. Except: TiVo.
ReplyDeleteExcellence is indeed rare, but it borders on nonexistent in open-source design, assuming we are defining “design” in solely a computer context.
TiVo is built on the Linux kernel.
ReplyDelete