RUSSELL PAVLICEK: "The Open Source" InfoWorld.com
ECLIPSING NETBEANS?
Posted February 15, 2002 01:01 PM Pacific Time
SOME ADHERENTS TO Sun Microsystem's NetBeans are miffed
at IBM's latest open-source effort, Eclipse. The
problem appears to be that Eclipse has a great deal of
similarity in function to NetBeans, and the NetBeans
folk believe that the IT community would be better
served if IBM had chosen to work on improving
NetBeans, rather than starting an entirely separate
development effort.
At first blush, the logic seems strong. Would not the
community benefit from developing one super
application development framework, rather than wasting
effort on driving two separate-but-similar tools? This
logic rests on arguments of simplicity and scarcity:
simplicity in that the existence of a single tool
removes any confusion over what tool to use, and
scarcity in that the creation of a second project
would reduce the talent pool needed to develop either
project to its full potential.
In fact, neither argument plays well in the open-source
world. Indigenous to this world is the concept that
active competition brings increased creativity. As
multiple efforts to solve a problem are developed, new
and innovative approaches tend to appear. Superior
solutions thrive; inferior projects eventually wither
and die. But because the source is open for all to
see, clever ideas that may have manifested themselves
in the weaker projects will eventually appear in the
stronger projects. So the strong eventually survive
and thrive, assimilating any creative features of the weak.
To this, add the postulate that as nature abhors a
vacuum, open source by its nature abhors a monopoly.
Very few open-source efforts exist that have not been
challenged by other projects of a very similar nature.
In a practice that appears to be a strange corollary
to the survival of the fittest, open source actually
demands that there be at least one other competitor
around, at least at the beginning. (There have been
exceptions to this rule, but they are relatively few
in number.) After all, how can you determine which
project really is the fittest if no one ever tried to
do a better job?
The talent pool in the open-source community is
frequently larger than that found in private
companies. This is especially true when two
corporations the size of IBM and Sun are backing the
respective efforts to begin with. Now add on the
thousands of open-source developers who have an
interest in improving these tools and the
talent-scarcity argument becomes inappropriate to this
particular scenario.
So what do I think about the competition between
NetBeans and Eclipse? Given the ways of open source, I
think it will yield one -- if not two --development
environments that will go far beyond what either
entity is capable of achieving today. As in business,
competition in open source can be a very good thing.
To paraphrase Linus Torvalds, "Let the best code win."
ECLIPSING NETBEANS?
Posted February 15, 2002 01:01 PM Pacific Time
SOME ADHERENTS TO Sun Microsystem's NetBeans are miffed
at IBM's latest open-source effort, Eclipse. The
problem appears to be that Eclipse has a great deal of
similarity in function to NetBeans, and the NetBeans
folk believe that the IT community would be better
served if IBM had chosen to work on improving
NetBeans, rather than starting an entirely separate
development effort.
At first blush, the logic seems strong. Would not the
community benefit from developing one super
application development framework, rather than wasting
effort on driving two separate-but-similar tools? This
logic rests on arguments of simplicity and scarcity:
simplicity in that the existence of a single tool
removes any confusion over what tool to use, and
scarcity in that the creation of a second project
would reduce the talent pool needed to develop either
project to its full potential.
In fact, neither argument plays well in the open-source
world. Indigenous to this world is the concept that
active competition brings increased creativity. As
multiple efforts to solve a problem are developed, new
and innovative approaches tend to appear. Superior
solutions thrive; inferior projects eventually wither
and die. But because the source is open for all to
see, clever ideas that may have manifested themselves
in the weaker projects will eventually appear in the
stronger projects. So the strong eventually survive
and thrive, assimilating any creative features of the weak.
To this, add the postulate that as nature abhors a
vacuum, open source by its nature abhors a monopoly.
Very few open-source efforts exist that have not been
challenged by other projects of a very similar nature.
In a practice that appears to be a strange corollary
to the survival of the fittest, open source actually
demands that there be at least one other competitor
around, at least at the beginning. (There have been
exceptions to this rule, but they are relatively few
in number.) After all, how can you determine which
project really is the fittest if no one ever tried to
do a better job?
The talent pool in the open-source community is
frequently larger than that found in private
companies. This is especially true when two
corporations the size of IBM and Sun are backing the
respective efforts to begin with. Now add on the
thousands of open-source developers who have an
interest in improving these tools and the
talent-scarcity argument becomes inappropriate to this
particular scenario.
So what do I think about the competition between
NetBeans and Eclipse? Given the ways of open source, I
think it will yield one -- if not two --development
environments that will go far beyond what either
entity is capable of achieving today. As in business,
competition in open source can be a very good thing.
To paraphrase Linus Torvalds, "Let the best code win."
posted by tcmorgan at
10:26 AM
