Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Open-Source

The open-source movement puzzles me. Software development is an engineering discipline that is unlike any other that has come to pass, and because of its uniqueness, the amount and ease of collaboration is unsurpassed. This was known. However, when Linus Torvalds unleashed the collaborative paradigm of open-source, the feature that makes software development so attractive was finally and fully exploited. The idea that an industry-grade software package could be spawned from the scurryings of several thousands of unpaid developers was absurd, and in many minds (particularly Microsoft’s) is still ludicrous. But there is hard evidence, and it is knocking on the private sector’s door with increasing steadiness. Certainly testing and bug-fixing is a huge benefactor of this new process, but it remains to be seen if the open-source community can flex its innovative muscles to prove that it doesn’t need the deep pockets that Apple’s and Microsoft’s R&D departments have to create something entirely new. I will be keeping tabs on Source-Forge…

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