Open Source Apps Should Start Innovating - Not Recreating

Who is that guy called Open Source, anyway? It seems like he is some maniac that craves nothing else but world domination!<p>OK, sorry, no more sarcasm. When I see that "open source monster" character I can be sure that the article will be superficial, boring and useless. Why put all software with a chain less license in a pile like its all the same - with a single author, company, business plan?<p>OK, so now a bit about the office suites:<p>Some people need an alternative to MS Office, so they come together with some other people who also need a alternative to MSOffice and pay a third group of people to make in (obviously sharing and thus lowering cost of developing the software). MS Office is a collection of clones of previous software, but that hasn't stopped it, right? Has it slowed down the adoption? Yet it seems to stop OO.o - it isn't "innovating" whatever that means. Maybe innovation means making a new shiny interface with colorful buttons to push? Yeah, the millions of people who just want to make a simple document with some bullet points and a page number on bottom will greatly appreciate the innovation. Although in my anecdotal experience "consumers" are more impressed by the ability to easily make a PDF..<p><i>Just because you opened up some code doesn’t mean anyone CARES. The consumer is all about flash, dazzle and speed. The newer the better… no matter what the price is. The iPhone/iPod are great examples of this. </i><p>Because everyone wants to play the Apple game, right? Maybe some people want to do their dirty job quickly and cheaply, especially during a recession and all, but given how confident the author and the shiny magazines are I'm really afraid to say it - please don't laugh at me.<p><i>Songbird is the exact same as iTunes th main difference is leveraging a plug-in platform.</i><p>Another gem - the author cannot "leverage" a modern innovation called spell-checking, but knows that Songbird is a iTunes clone with plug-in platform which means it will not "succeed"[1], unlike Firefox which "innovates" (of course Firefox is far more than a clone of a clone, but with a great extensions eco-system). I don't even use iTunes and I don't know what are the chances but I can see an obvious self-contradiction.<p>[1] What is "succeeding" anyway? Getting the most lip-service? Obviously that is the kind of world-domination we are talking about, since Firefox doesn't have the biggest market share and Google Chrome have even less, but they are succeeding.<p>I don't like Facebook and MySpace with all the conformism, small talk and general herd behavior displayed there and I'm starting to dislike blogs and even some aspects of forums (points, post-count, ranks).<p>I spend too much time in the Internet.. gotta do something useful, bye.

Have had this discussion occasionally with friends of mine.Always a little confused where they are coming from, since where I sit in academia most of the innovation I see is built on open source.<p>In particular, open source software tools provide platforms for experimentation that would not otherwise be available. For example, the Linux and BSD kernels made it possible for operating system researchers to try out lots of different ideas on everything from security to memory management with real hardware and real workloads. Without this open source software, your options are 1) write everything yourself, 2) license a kernel from someone, or 3) go work for a company that writes a kernel (e.g. Microsoft, Wind River, Green Hills).<p>For another example, the Valgrind memory checking tool includes a platform for binary analysis and translation. That platform has let people innovate by building tools that run on large, real Linux programs. I know of at least two academic theses that build on Valgrind (including mine), and there's now three community-contributed data race detection tools.<p>Both of these areas also have closed source software with innovations, of course. Still, they seem like cases where the open source software platform has lowered the barrier to entry and made it possible for a wider range of people to contribute, therefore spurring innovation.<p>So I don't buy the broad claim that "open source" software fails to innovate. Maybe we could talk about more specific segments, like office software or microblogging to focus the discussion?

Open source should do both, this is not an either/or issue.<p>Open source should innovate where it can, but at the same time it should offer people that are locked in to certain vendors free and open alternatives to those solutions.<p>Breaking vendor lock in is an excellent reason to develop an open source package, even if that means that you are not 'innovating'.

Has the author used songbird?<p>Granted the interface is purposefully similar. Also it plays music. Outside of that though songbird is greatly different then any music player I have ever used. The entire idea behind songbird is to integrate music listening in with your browsing. For this purpose it works great.

The problem is with this article is that the author doesn't realize that the main interest of open source apps for most people is that they are free and that they provide similar functionality to proprietary ones, otherwise they wouldn't switch.

Hi, Auther here<p>Thanks for reading and thank you for taking the time to voice your opinions on the matter.<p>I will reply throughout the day to all of your comments.