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It is not a competition: OSS & Microsoft
This comment on Anders' blog has been brought to my attention:
I really enjoyed what Anders and Ayende did when they took the piss with Microsoft's "cool" new technologies when they wrote Mean Fiddler and Bumbler in record time. Its a pity that these master programmers don't want to continue developing these frameworks - it would be soooo cool to see open source alternatives to M$ stuff taking the lead before M$ are able to release anything themselves.
Anders' post is about new development with Fiddler, exposing NHibernate's entities over REST services (which deserves another post all together). I wanted to respond to this comment because of several things:
- M$ - I would imagine that it is at least somewhat offensive to Microsoft when this is used.
- "taking a piss" - No, I use a bathroom for that.
The general tone of the comment is basically amount us vs. them, which is completely opposite to the way I see things. I didn't wrote Bumbler to show off anything, I wrote it because I was annoyed that Jasper was presented as some great & heroic thing, when in practice it is very simple wrapper around existing functionality. I imagine that Anders has much the same reasoning when writing Fiddler, the counterpart to Astoria. The initial versions, at least, exists to make a point, not to show who is better. Writing software based on the old "I'll show them" is not a good idea, in my opinion.
I am working on OSS because:
- It it interesting
- It makes my job easier
- Clear my head
- I get plenty of benefits (from code reviews to patches, from bug reports to experience)
Taking both those platforms and extending them to be usable (which is what is happening to Mean Fiddler right now) is dependant on need, not development for the sake of competition.
As an aside, I would generally rather use something that already exists than write my own, on the condition that I get the same simplicity, flexibility and quality that I would get if I would write it on my own. A lot of the stuff from Microsoft fit that bill (most of the .Net framework), and a lot of the stuff doesn't (the entire Web Forms stack, to start with). That is the main motivation, to make my work easier.
Comments
"Taking the piss" is Australian and NZ slang for making fun of
I second this. When I first read the comment I didn't regard it as very offensive, but when I reread it I realized it was. It was fun to write the Mean Fiddler, and even if the explanation for the choice of name might seem a little cocky, my motivation was exactly the same as yours. I had no intentions of making it into a real framework, but it is heartwarming to see that Derrick has chosen to turn the Mean Fiddler into a real project. Even if it might appear to be competing with Astoria, it uses different means to achieve its capabilities and is more an alternative than a show off thing.
We "take the piss" out of people here in the UK too. It's a harmless term when meaning to mock something or someone. Perhaps you should rename "Rhino Mocks" to "Rhino Taking the Piss"? ;)
It can, however, be used aggressively, for example:
"You're taking the piss!"
...meaning...
"You have gone too far and I am not happy!"
Perhaps not you, but a vast majority of the .NET OSS community seems to think of it as a competition.
Look at all the bitching when Microsoft decides to create a 'competing' product with some open source effort.
If an OSS project has value, then it will prove it in the marketplace. If they die because Microsoft produces something vaguely similar, it didn't have much value.
For instance, NHibernate will 'survive' LINQ. Other projects won't survive.
There's a lesson there.
jdn,
Can you point me to serious OSS developers that have this opinion? I can't recall off-hand anyone whose motivation is solely to show MS how they can do better.
The issues that are raised when MS is putting out something that compete with OSS stuff has been spoke on before, but basically it boils down reinventing the wheel, and not providing basic functionality. That is completely different than the issue brought with that comment
Ayende, I will argue vociferously with you on this point.
.NET OSS developers can't have it both ways. They can't complain about Microsoft 'reinventing the wheel' and not make it about a competition. It is the same thing, when it boils down to it.
What is the complaint otherwise? That Microsoft shouldn't come out with something that mirrors OSS efforts unless it is 10 times better? 10 times better according to whom? You? The OSS police?
And directly to your comment: what person said that Jasper was "some great & heroic thing"? Who said this? When? Where?
You are much better read than I am, so I'm sure you can find a link that said that, but it is exactly the sort of comment that makes it very much ' a competition.'
Your own and Jeremy Miller's own blogs about 'building a better CAB in an hour' reek of 'it is a competition.'
I do not doubt that you do not intend it to come across that way, but it certainly does, in spades, and I don't see how you could think otherwise.
jdn, have to disagree ... what Ayende and Anders did was not to take the piss out of MS, and I never saw them trying to do that. What they both showed is that with a little bit of thought and good design you could simplify a specific scenario, and produce a workable framework with less time and code.
Neither Anders nor Ayende would claim heir efforts even come close to the full functionality that the MS version provide, but what they did do was demonstrate how to refine the MS product into something that better fitted with their world view - notbaly that if you are going to provide sucha product then the source should be open and visible to allow it to be adapted and evolved.
All very healthy.
Okay, so maybe I shouldn't post at 2am my time, since 'reeks' wasn't the best choice of words.
Let me put it a slightly different way. If you look at the non-Microsoft established OSS world (Linux kernel, Apache, Open Office, etc.), it certainly is about competition.
What is bad about saying that what Ayende and others are doing is providing competition? Though I didn't state it clearly, I don't think there is anything bad about Jeremey Miller's string of posts, Ayende's Hibernating Rhinos series, etc.
And if they provide something better than what MS does in their versions, isn't that good? Whatever I personally think of Monorail or NHibernate or nUnit or any other OSS project, isn't good software worthy of its own development?
On a related topic, why any need to justify working on OSS in the .NET space? Building community, it scratches an itch, it makes good software....is there something about Microsoft's slowly changing antipathy to OSS that makes it important to say "Hey, it's okay to do .NET OSS"?
Although, I will add that I don't see any reason why Microsoft has any obligation to support .NET OSS. But that's a larger topic.
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