Comments on: Torvalds: ‘there is no open source community’

By: 451 CAOS Theory » What we talk about when we talk about community

451 CAOS Theory » What we talk about when we talk about community — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:49:37 +0000

[...] open source users. What I had written was this: Community - I personally am in agreement with Linus Torvalds and John Mark Walker in that there is no (one) open source community. The term [...]

By: Matthew Aslett

Matthew Aslett — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:16:35 +0000

Fixed, thanks for the info.

By: dooglus

dooglus — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:42:34 +0000

Your available link is bad. It should be like this instead.

By: Linux Foundation News » Blog Archive » The 451 Group: Torvald’s thoughts on the open source community

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:49:53 +0000

[...] Matt Aslett gives an overview of Linus’ discussion of the open source community in the LF’s debut podcast in its Open Voices series. [...]

By: Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker

Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:05:16 +0000

Linus Says Linux Isn’t a Single Community…

In a recent podcast interview Linus Torvalds discussed with Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation the notion of “community.” (A full text transcript is also available.) Bottom line, there is no single community. Rather there are many different communiti…

By: Matthew Aslett

Matthew Aslett — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:48:04 +0000

My use of single marks was meant to suggest that I was paraphrasing, rather than using a direct quote, although I accept that is not international convention. However, I don’t believe the use of quotes is disingenuous.

It is a matter of semantics. What I believe Torvalds was saying is that the open source community is theoretical concept, while in practice there is a development process that involves numerous individuals and organizations with different goals.

If a company is unsure how to engage in this process properly the first thing it must do is stop focusing on theoretical concepts and start focusing on the practical development process.

There is more to this than “claiming to be part of a community is nothing, it is doing work which matter”. That is why it takes more than a whole page to explain.

By: John Mark

John Mark — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:03:49 +0000

Read my article and all will be revealed

-John Mark

By: Boycott Novell » There is No Community and There is No Communism, Either

Boycott Novell » There is No Community and There is No Communism, Either — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:10:30 +0000

[...] The Linux Foundation has just announced a new series of audiocasts which makes its debut with a Linus Torvalds interview. The 451 Group has already dived into this first audio and it makes the observation that even Linus agrees with the above. “There is no open source community”, argues Torvalds. Here is a fragment from this excellent analysis: How can software vendors engage with the open source community? An important step, according to Linus Torvalds, is to stop believing such a thing really exists and start engaging in the development process. [...]

By: G Bulmer

G Bulmer — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 02:14:55 +0000

I think the use of quotes is disingenuous. Linus Torvalds does not say ‘there is no open source community’, he says ‘there is no one community’. The idea that there is more than one, rather than none has different implications. I believe he is also explaining that claiming to be part of a community is nothing, it is doing work which matter. Does this take a whole page to explain?