N’achetez pas des logiciels Bezos

Sep 8, 2020 Sava Tatić

PRAGUE – Dans les débats sur la santé déclinante des médias d’information, la technologie est perçue comme étant à la fois le mal et le remède. Lorsque l’internet a bouleversé le modèle commercial des organes de presse traditionnels vers le milieu des années 1990, de nouvelles technologies – des médias sociaux aux micropaiements – ont formé le socle d’un nouveau modèle. Mais aujourd’hui, l’innovation menace une fois de plus la santé du journalisme, et cette fois-ci, les organes de presse sont en grande partie responsables des dégâts occasionnés.

Les salles de rédaction actuelles dépendent des systèmes de gestion de contenu (SGC), qui permettent aux journalistes de planifier, écrire, éditer et publier leurs articles. Pourtant, quasiment tous les journalistes ont une histoire d’horreur à raconter concernant les SGC de leurs médias. Il y a quelques années, la revue spécialisée en ligne Digiday a compilé certains de ces récits, brossant un tableau accablant de pertes de contenus et de temps. Selon les termes d’un contributeur, l’exécution de tâches avec le SGC de leur journal était une « pagaille monstrueuse ».

Les grands groupes de médias – en particulier Vox Media et le Washington Post – voient un potentiel dans le chaos actuel des systèmes de gestion de contenu et commercialisent leurs propres systèmes à d’autres médias. La question qui se pose est de savoir pourquoi ils sont soudainement aussi empressés de vendre leurs outils internes à d’autres organes de presse.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 4 in all 4 Comments on this article

Mikayel Karapetyan Sep 16, 2020

Media coverage is always biased somehow. It is not only about the trustworthy facts - it is also about the facts that are highlighted the most and presented to the public and the ones which are just simply neglected. This makes every major outlet biased (at least I haven't heard about any unbiased one).

Furthermore, the mere fact that Github (or RedHat , etc. ) were acquired by commercial companies might mean the end of one battle but not the end of the war.

Just simply accepting the terms on which the big sharks are playing would slide us gradually into the tyranny of the tech giants. And to quote Baron Acton - "absolute power corrupts absolutely".

I believe that the progress made by humanity over the past century in terms of human rights, rejecting racism and advocating for inclusiveness could never have been achieved without people who advocated for freedom , including freedom of speech. At the same time, these achievements would not have been possible on the terms of media moguls who were and are defining what their media reports as facts and what could be conveniently left out of their narrative.

In my opinion, none of the earlier comments made below this article were addressing issues underlying the article. Neither they were addressing the specific points made in the article. Instead, these comments left an impression of indirect advocating for proprietary software as well as unproven statements about open source being a lost battle.
In my opinion, a truly balanced approach should always prevail. Though it is hard to achieve we should never cease striving for it.
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Michael Public Sep 10, 2020

Advertorial :-(

Open source software comes with its own issues. Often it lacks the resources to do anything meaningful without the support of a major corporation, who would then use it to further their own ends. Despite its popularity there will never be a Python 4.0 because there is no money - just 3 volunteers. .NET on the other hand moves from strength to strength all the because Microsoft invests heavily and continuously in its development - and not for some alternative goal like Google or Facebook or Amazon - but for the clean cut commercial goal of selling tools to developers.
- Sava Tatić Sep 23, 2020
  
  Your comment reads more like something we used to hear during the Bill Gates, or worse, Steve Ballmer years, when Microsoft's strategy was to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about open source software (Ballmer infamously dubbed it “a cancer” on competition in 2001).
  
  Today, however, Microsoft is a successful turncoat, waxing lyrical about open source and open sourcing almost everything except its main cash cows. In 2016, Microsoft made its reversal complete by joining the Linux Foundation, and earlier this year, company president Brad Smith conceded that the software giant was “on the wrong side of history when open source exploded at the beginning of the century.”
  
  As an open-source advocate from the early days of Linux, seeing a tech giant jump the barricade was a bizarre sight. Yet I understand their logic, and actually welcome the volte-face. By acknowledging that open source creates value, they managed to inject a dose of wider relevance into the technology without jeopardizing their core business.
  
  Open source software has become much more than just programming languages or the building blocks of the internet. There are projects – ours and many others – that are successfully competing with top-market proprietary software because they represent a better way of working AND because the software is as good or better than the closed-source alternatives.
  
  Moreover, our clients and partners fully understand what they are buying into. Even Microsoft gets it, and I have yet to encounter any serious client who'd be afraid of open source.
  
  At Sourcefabric, our goal has long been to help the beleaguered media industry dig itself out of an ever-deepening technological hole and rebase on solid tools that are cheaper and more sustainable than black-box alternatives. We have been making our software with similar aims to what Elon Musk had with the Roadster – to radically upset the market with technology that blows the competition out of the water in terms of performance.
  
  Much to Steve Ballmer’s dismay, we’re succeeding. Today, Superdesk – the open source CMS we launched in 2014 – and its siblings provide news to more than 100 million people every day, and at a fraction of the cost of commercial competitors. That wouldn't have been possible without the pooling of the creative energies of all the participating newsrooms.
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Elizabeth Pula Sep 8, 2020

Unfortunately Github already has been sold to Microsoft. So, the battle has reverted to a repeat performance to the next degree.
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