Publish: Why should you care about open source?

Jul 08, 2001, 17:00 (29 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Ryan Underwood)

This article, geared toward the e-business community, tries to put Open Source development in that context. The ultimate Open Source projects? XML and Macromedia's DreamWeaver, a closed-source product with an open API.

"Programs generally are not totally open-source or totally closed-source. Macromedia, for example, does a great job of maintaining an open API in Dreamweaver that allows users to contribute a whole range of extensions they've developed on their own. At the same time the software includes plenty of safeguards to protect it against outright piracy. The advantage in that strategy is obvious: Whenever new versions of Dreamweaver are released, the decisions about what goes or stays aren't made by a small, isolated group of staff programmers. The decisions get made, ostensibly, by the users who have guided the development of the application through their contributions of code. Such a process makes for products that become much more useful and relevant in release after release as opposed to, say, getting an enhanced version of Clippy."

Complete Story

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