But this is where you're wrong. There is an implicit morality because the community of coders has its own mores and whims, but has no impetus to do what is best for the public at large. Government does this based on the motivation of some political ideal or implied social contract. Corporations do what is best based on getting profit from the masses. What is the motivation for the open source coder? I think right now the only answer is adulation of the masses, for masses equal to other coders. Coders work for prestige in their community; everyone wants to be a Linus.
What you're basically saying is demand drives the coder. But what you really mean is that work gets done when a coder's whim *matches* the demand of the public. In other words, the coder has to share the demand... what does this mean if the majority of coders use operating system XYZ and don't care about the needs/demands of users of system ABC? Or hardware 123 versus hardware 456? I'll tell you what happens...
OPEN SOURCE GUY 1: "Video card 789 sux because it doesn't support Linux. Don't buy it!"
OPEN SOURCE GUY 2: "Yeah, and who has time to write the drivers for that company's products, they sux0r!!1!!1"
"It'll get done by someone" is a specious argument at best. The reality is that there's a limited pool of resources, and those resources have a limited amount of "spare time" because that's what the majority of open source projects are for most people: spare time hobby projects.
It's been 10 years since they opened the Bazaar. Where's the revolution? All I see is c0d3r kiddiez writing baby projects for their hobbies on an OS that a guy wrote for a hobby.
Re: Then open-source works perfectly...
What you're basically saying is demand drives the coder. But what you really mean is that work gets done when a coder's whim *matches* the demand of the public. In other words, the coder has to share the demand... what does this mean if the majority of coders use operating system XYZ and don't care about the needs/demands of users of system ABC? Or hardware 123 versus hardware 456? I'll tell you what happens...
OPEN SOURCE GUY 1: "Video card 789 sux because it doesn't support Linux. Don't buy it!"
OPEN SOURCE GUY 2: "Yeah, and who has time to write the drivers for that company's products, they sux0r!!1!!1"
"It'll get done by someone" is a specious argument at best. The reality is that there's a limited pool of resources, and those resources have a limited amount of "spare time" because that's what the majority of open source projects are for most people: spare time hobby projects.
It's been 10 years since they opened the Bazaar. Where's the revolution? All I see is c0d3r kiddiez writing baby projects for their hobbies on an OS that a guy wrote for a hobby.