The Limits of Open Source
Open source is great for verifying the integrity of the software itself, but doesn’t necessarily give you any purchase on auditing the software’s assumptions. Say the software is modeling physics: it’s not too difficult under open source to verify that (say) it’s using the textbook value of G, in the Newtonian Law of Gravity, but verifying that the textbook value of G is physically correct is a different and far more difficult problem.
Armed and Dangerous » Blog Archive » The Limits of Open Source
15 Great Quotes from Torvalds and Stallman about Free and Open Source Software
In celebration of Software Freedom Day 2008, I would like to share to you all some of my favorite quotes about Free and Open Source Software from no less than the two pillars of FOSS, Linus Torvalds and Richard M. Stallman. Enjoy and be inspired.
15 Great Quotes from Torvalds and Stallman about Free and Open Source Software
n celebration of Software Freedom Day 2008, I would like to share to you all some of my favorite quotes about Free and Open Source Software from no less than the two pillars of FOSS, Linus Torvalds and Richard M. Stallman. Enjoy and be inspired.
Why people like open source
Aaron Erickson that mentioned that if money was no object, that he would still work in technology, but would spend his time contributing to open source projects. I got to wondering if anyone has cataloged the reasons why people like open source. I searched and searched, but I did not really see the type of list that I was looking for, so I thought I would take a crack at making one myself. This list is by no means complete.
10 interesting open source software forks and why they happened
Much of the open source software that is in popular use today was born from other projects. We thought it would be interesting to take a look at the history of some of these software forks and find out WHY they happened in the first place.
We looked at the WHY because software forking is often seen as somewhat of a waste of development resources and isn’t considered a good thing. Sometimes the results can be great, though, as many of the examples below clearly show.
Royal Pingdom » 10 interesting open source software forks and why they happened
Is open-source “difficult”?…
In a post with a title about managing an open-source community, built up of comments about patching an open source project, and ending with a complaint about how hard it all is, he uncharacteristically never touches the actual question of community. Open-source projects are community works, not baskets for drive-by contribution, little falling-away jump shot-patches. Open-source folk like to call themselves a “meritocracy,” and there’s a lot of truth to that, but what you really need to advance in an open-source community is contribution: your merit has to be shown by strengthening the community, not just lobbing code-bombs over the ridge.
How open-source became an important pion in controlling market shares
In 1986 Richard Stallman wrote his famous manifesto ‘The Free Software Definition’. It was later published by the Free Software Foundation. The text defines free software - free as in the ‘free as in freedom’ sense. The canonical lines of the text became the cornerstones of the GNU Project (later Linux). Today, the manifesto has been published in 39 languages. Open source isn’t new, it became viable when the first computer-like machine came down on earth.
How open-source became an important pion in controlling market shares
The True Cost of Open Software
In my last article I explained the philosophy of open-source software. To summarize, the open-source community prefers to offer knowledge without a price tag, allowing anyone to benefit so long as any derivative solutions are also open. Now I’d like to discuss the true costs of choosing open-software.
Segue Technologies Corporate Blog » Blog Archive » The True Cost of Open Software
Cracking the open-source community code for drive-by developers
Jack Repenning, CTO of Collabnet, takes issue with my complaint that contributing code to open-source projects is hard. Jack’s suggestion that “while community membership requires more than ‘casual contribution,’ you shouldn’t have to ‘become a key member’” in order to play a part is fair and spot-on. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really tackle the big issue.
Free and Open Source Software
The average internet user might not know about the manifesting beauty behind the code of the websites that they are viewing, behind the sites that they keep visiting, behind the softwares and applications that aid them in their daily life on the world wide web. Thus, let’s all together celebrate a very special event to thank all of these wares that made our life easier and more convinient, helped us do our tasks faster and more efficient, contributed to the feature rich applications we just can’t leave without.
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Event at UM Matina | Pinoy Teens
