Beranger presents analysis of why he thinks so (via E@zyVG). The article is quite exhaustive, so I am not sure I have been able to grasp everything from it. However, some things that stuck out for me was that the pessimism is mostly because of the myriad of licenses, the in-house fights and an explicit effort to compete rather than improve.
I agree, not entirely, because the article is mostly about operating systems, and not open source as such. I do not think that open source is in a sorry state, but it has its share of problems. It is quite true that
in-house fighting leads to flame wars, and they are mostly useless other than pampering egos of the participants. In face of incomplete documentation, the discussions serve as good solutions, but the fights lead to confusion, not decision. I think the benefit of open source is that it works as a solution for the user better than the closed source. I wonder if the layman is really worried about the philosophy behind it. Open source needs to think about the end user more than the licenses or flame wars of the competitors.
