Illustrating the blessing and the curse of open-source software, some contriversy has arisen over Intel’s Moblin (their Linux for netbooks) replacing NetworkManager with a custom program called ConnMan.

NetworkManager is tool for configuring network connections, from ethernet to 3G. NetworkManager is used in almost every modern Linux distribution, pretty much regardless of the desktop environment. Due to complaints about NetworkManager’s architecture, extensibility, customization options, and lack of WiMax support, the Moblin project decided they needed something completley new: ConnMan.

ConnMan lacks many of the features of NetworkManager, but offers complete separation of the front-end and back-end, WiMax support, and more customization/extensibility.

The Blessing

Open-source software allows anyone to have the choice of rewriting a piece of something that they don’t think is done the right way or that just isn’t right for them. This means that when one project starts sliding in quality, another project can create an alternative program to do the same, or a similar, thing, often utilizing some of the existing code. This often prevents applications from being abandoned and becoming obsolete.

The Curse

This same attribute of open-source software is also a curse, though. A lot of time is spent rewriting code that, in some cases, may be perfectly good code. This time could be better spent working on something new. Worse, when you get two conflicting applications, as is the case here, it fragments the Linux desktop. Right now, every major desktop Linux distribution is using NetworkManager. This means that when one distribution improves the tool, everyone benefits. If, however, a few of these distributions switched to ConnMan, suddenly only the ConnMan distros would benefit from other ConnMan distros and the same for NetworkManager distros.

This is simply an attribute of open-source. Sometimes it is incredibly beneficial, such as when a project is abandoned, but it also encourages people to reinvent the wheel over and over again.

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