After having caused the ruckus in the
eCommunism thread, I would have thought we had clearly established the need to avoid baitword topics, and similar themes. Perhaps I was mistaken.
However, since we are here

, might as well make the best of it.
Bill H wrote: this dissertation a couple times and I have been able to extract exactly zero meaningful information from it.
Buried in the over-the-top writing style, there are in fact some key arguments made. Namely:
- Its not the people, its the market forces
- Without those people, the market forces would keep those projects moving
- So businesses need to focus on the market forces, not on keeping the people happy
Those are the opening salvo's.
However, while each are interesting and debatable positions, he fails to back them up with solid facts. He does a fantastic job arguing the other side, telling a fairly complete, well-documented, and strong background of why the popular story is as it is - there *were* notable personalities and they *did* drive forward the projects in question, all of which became extremely successful.
Yet, he gives no evidence that it is wrong. He simply states that "we" (Royal we? Who is he speaking on behalf of?) feel, believe, argue, and assert various
positions that support his contention. He points at software costs lowering (doesn't actually give numbers, or sources to refer to), yet not at any specific project that had a notable leader step down, and move forward despite that driven only by market forces.
Worse, he then throws out supposition as fact:
Looking at open source from an economic perspective, it becomes clear that Linux or its equivalent was bound to happen eventually, regardless of whether Linus decided to release a kernel in 1991.
I'm sure the same (inaccurate) argument could be made for Einstein. Someone was bound to figure it all out eventually.
Only they didn't. The great man did arrive, did discover and break that ground, and more. Linus is no Einstein, but he did things that you can't remove just because it "probably coulda woulda shoulda happened anyway". As my Mother used to say, "Coulda" Woulda, but he didn't.
Even better, he makes a claim that is provably false:
Both of these are the natural result of massive price drops in their respective markets.
Neither Unix at the time of Linux entering the market, or Webservers at the time Apache entered the market, were dropping in price. In fact, in both cases, they were *rising*. Did the introduction of both then lower the price, as would be expected in a competitive market with a zero-cost competitor?
NO. They continued to rise for several years later, until they gained widespread
community acceptance as feature-comparable, stable, and reliable. Only then did they gain the market share capable of causing price corrections, and when those occurred it was a slope directly headed to commodity. Notice, the effect came after the cause, not the other way around, as he argues.
The point he desperately hopes people will accept is that the people, the community, don't matter, and that just by working with lots of people (force multiplier), you can get the same effect, with the same level of success.
The only problem is that he lists several (GNU, Linux, Apache) great counter-examples, and can't point to a single example proving that true. In every highly successful opensource project, there have been either great individuals, or a robust community driving their success. Not market forces.
Or put another way, it wasn't the process - it was the people.