:FastCompany: Inspired by Work: An Interview with Eric Raymond
FastCompany: Inspired by Work: An Interview with Eric Raymond Oct 20, 1999, 16 :08 UTC (6 Talkback[s]) (4567 reads) (Other stories by William C. Taylor) (As seen on slashdot)
"Most of the gurus who describe the changing nature of work agree
on some basic points: People do their best work when they're
motivated by a sense of purpose. More and more work is becoming
teamwork, and small, committed teams tend to do the best work. In
a world of email, Web pages, and instant messaging, it's never been
easier to work closely with people you've never met and who live in
places you've never visited. Put simply, we are developing some
radically new answers to some of the most fundamental issues
about work: why people work, how they work, and what they
expect from their work."
"Eric S. Raymond, 41, has been thinking differently about work -- and
working differently -- for the past 15 years. He is a provocative
writer, an engaging speaker, and an accomplished hacker. Most of
all, he's an influential evangelist for perhaps the most important new
phenomenon in software. Raymond is a visible and vocal advocate
of open-source software -- a radically different approach to
software development that has produced, most famously, the Linux
operating system, the Apache Web server, and the Perl scripting
language."
"What distinguishes open-source programs from other computer
applications is that the core technology -- the underlying source
code -- is totally visible and freely available to anyone who wants
it. There are no patents, no trade secrets, no intellectual-property
protections whatsoever. That's because no one person or company
"owns" the software. A global, volunteer army of programmers
create the software. These people work hard to fix bugs and
develop new features mainly because they want to."
