Freshmeat: Has Open Source become derailed?

“A few days ago, an article was published which asked
whether Open Source was producing results. The author claimed that
there were none, except for Mozilla. As a developer who as embraced
the concept of Open Source, my first reaction was outrage.
Obviously there were results, and many readers made the point
clear. The BSDs, Linux, Apache, Bind, GIMP, and GNOME are but a few
examples of highly successful projects.”

“But then I took another look at the article and at Open Source
software in general, and I saw what he saw, and possibly the
context that he saw it in. Until about a year or so ago, the
mainstream press generally ignored Open Source and didn’t really
know what was going on in the field. Now everyone is jumping on the
Linux bandwagon and the press are following the field for the first
time. Look at Linux, Apache, Bind, and the rest. They were mature
projects by the time the rest of the industry took notice. Since
then, except for Mozilla, there have been no major Open Source
projects that made a major impact on the market.”

“I guess I’ve just made myself serious flame-bait for all of you
out there, but take a close look at the announcements on sites like
freshmeat, SourceForge, or even LinuxBerg. For about the last eight
months now, all I’ve seen in the line of new projects have been
small utilities that do something that is often meaningless in the
bigger picture. Sure, every one of us wants his ICQ client to look
the way he wants, so those who can write their own and publish it
for those who can’t. I know I’m guilty of doing exactly that with
my gView and gRun applications. They have been small tools I needed
and that I decided the rest of the world might take an interest
in.”

Complete
Story