Here's a well-written analysis of the state of Open Source software. Probably of interest to many in this group. http://marktarver.com/thecathedralandthebizarre.html

"Raymond meant by 'open source', software licensed under liberal licenses like BSD and MIT"

That's a misconception tirelessly promoted by RMS, who sees "open source software" as the enemy of "free software". In actual fact, CATB uses Linux as its primary example of open source software, and Linux uses the GPL licence. Raymond co-founded the Open Source Initiative, and the Open Source Definition includes copyleft licences like the GPL.

I read it, but "well-written analysis" is not the description I would choose, to put it mildly.

"Well-written" means for me that it makes its point clearly and concisely. It doesn't imply that I agree with it. I do actually agree with much of it, its main weakness from my point of view being that it ignores many aspects of the FOSS universe.

Most open source is barely usable and empirical inspection of Github will show that to be true.

Anybody can create a github repo with a few clicks. There is no gatekeeper, and no standards a repo must meet for continued existence on github. So of course most of github is rubbish, it couldn't be otherwise. People also claim that most of the commercial software in the Google Play store is rubbish. It would be equally valid to claim that "Most software is barely useable".

However the problem is that the open source user may not stumble on this magical fraction and the invisible iceberg of buggy, ill-conceived open source lies submerged ready to rip out the bottom of your leisure time and send that lazy weekend to the bottom.

Ditto for Google Play, which contains 2.8 million apps, the vast majority of which are junk at best, malware at worst. By applying the author's own reasoning process, commercial software is a failed experiment. Of course, there are examples of good commercial software, but per the author, if we point that out, we are committing "*the isolated points fallacy".*

Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law)

@Konrad Hinsen Exactly! Do we really need data to tell us that most GitHub repos are crap? Parts of OP are new, and parts are good. But the parts that are good are not new, and the parts that are new are not good.

I think he writes very well. 90% of everything I read online is crap. This is not.

Maybe it's subjective, but it doesn't feel like it. I'd much rather read something written poorly but in good faith. I've read Mark Tarver enough to know he's aware of at least some opposing facts. He's written criticisms of open source before that I've been more sympathetic to.