jmccay's Journal: Open Source

Open Source has be scientifically probed by other, but I came to a realization the other day. The true nature behind open source is sharing, the realization that you can't do it alone, and that you might not be the best.
      {rephrase this paragraph} People say lifes a journey, and we travel many paths on this journey. Open source is just another path in the land we call life. I remember Tim Orielly's comment during his talk The Shape of Things to Come (available to listen to here) describing an old lady's description of Bill Gates as being the dinner guest who just doesn't want some of the mashed potatoes--he wants all the mashed potatoes. The corporate way is also just another path in the land of life, but the tradition corporate paths are growing old and worn. Some are now journeying on the path of open source--at least part of the time. The question is why would they?
      I said that one of the things I realized (which is obvious but under appreciated) is that open source is about sharing. Sharing is so much a part of Open Source that several licenses have been created to insist you share with others what was shared with you. Simply put, you must play nicely.
      Sharing once was a big part of our culture. As a child, I was told to share with others, but I tended to be greedy. I was looking out for my own interests, pleasures, and needs. When I got older, I finally realised that sharing was a good thing--it just took some time.
      When I was younger, I learned to program in BASIC on the Tandy Color COmputer (1, 2, and 3). If you were serious about the color computer, you got Rainbow Magazine. The magazine was only about using and programming the Color Computer. You could learn a lot about programming in basic this way. One of the old techniques I learned was how to fool the eyes into thinking there was more than 4 colors on the screen when you were in the resolution that had only 4 colors. It was very simple, you packed different color lines (or pixels) next to each other. I even played around with OS-9 Level II (a realtime Unix clone--not the Apple OS). Times seemed more open then because like Linux of today, most people using the Tandy Color Computer were hobbiest and a few professionals (back in the day of BBSs).
      Eventually, I switched to an IBM pc clone and was disappointed. Information was no longer readily available, and I couldn't do a lot of things on my IBM pc clone computer. Speech synthesis didn't seem possible, but it was a simple cartrige to plug in on my Color Computer. The same goes for sound and music.
      Things are coming full circle again in the computer industry. Sharing in the open source world has become a vital part of it. This brings us back to the early days of *nix operating systems when code floated free to and from places. This idea of sharing is not just a look, but don't touch idea. It's a here's what I did. You can change it for your needs, but you must make the changes you made to what I gave you available for other make similar changes. The industry seems to go in circles with the only thing changing is the hardware we use int he various models.

  {more later on the realization that you can't do it alone and that you might not be the best}