“Welcome to the first installment of Open Sources. In this
column I’ll keep you abreast of open source freeware developments
in both the technical and the business arenas. Many essential
technologies that run the Web are freeware, with the source code
available to all as a download…”
“These aren’t just toys for hobbyists. If your business is on
the Internet, you need to know about this stuff. Where did all this
software come from, and why is it generally of such high quality?
The tradition of developing software packages and giving them away
in source code started with minicomputer developers, going as far
back as the MIT hackers on the Digital Equipment Corp. PDP series
in the 1960s. (PC hobbyist developers in the 1980s tended to make
their products shareware, asking for financial contributions from
their users, and to distribute their packages as binaries, so the
users couldn’t make their own modifications.)”
“Why are the results so good? Generally speaking, it’s a
matter of pride. If a developer releases the source of
software, the source is subjected to peer review. It is not a
question of the developer getting lots of free beta testing and
feedback, nor is it the benefits the developer gets from having
lots of users checking source code and suggesting bug fixes.
Rather, you are writing for an informed and technically aware group
of peers, and you won’t want to release your code to it if you’re
not proud of it…”