brainstorms

Monday April 25, 2005

must read: success of open source

i rarely miss important books related to computing, but somehow i managed to not get a copy of steven weber's the success of open source the instant it hit the shelves. how annoying. my friend peter roosen-runge told me about it, and i am now reading. my impression from initial pre-reading: it is the rare kind of book that is smart, well written and deep at the same time. it is a must-read for anyone having anything to do with open-source.

an interesting tidbit i found early on:

In the autumn of 1993, Larry McVoy at Sun Microsystems captured the core of the problem in a memo called "The Sourceware Operating System Proposal" that he prepared for Sun CEO Scott McNealy. The memo began with the proclamation that "Unix is dying" because of duplication of effort around different implementations, leading to high prices; poor compatibility; and worst of all, slower development as each separate Unix vendor had to solve the same kinds of problems independently. [...]

McVoy made radical suggestions for a Unix resurrection. Sun should give away the source code for SunOS 4, its proprietary version of Unix, or simply drop the Sun operating system altogether and adopt Linux instead.

peter wayner's very funny aphorism:

how many open source developers does it take to change a light bulb? 17. 17 to argue about the license; 17 to argue about the brain-deadedness of the light bulb architecture, 17 to argue about a new model that encompasses all models of illumination and makes it simple to replace candles, campfires, pilot lights, and skylights with the same easy-to-extend mechanism, 17 to speculate about the secretive industrial conspiracy that ensures that light bulbs will burn out frequently; 1 to finally change the light bulb, and 16 who decide that this solution is good enough for the time being.

weber's eight general principles of open source process [based on raymond's earlier analysis and his own interviews and observations]

1. make it interesting and make sure it happens
2. scratch an itch
3. minimize how many times you have to reinvent the wheel
4. solve problems thorugh parallel work processes whenever possible
5. leverage the law of large numbers
6. document what you do
7. release early and release often
8. talk a lot

i expect to have a detailed review of this book soon.

open source software is always in beta.