P Kishor wrote:
For the two good examples of OSS that you provide that had well-funded
parents who lost interest in their children, Perl and Python and PHP
and Linux are four that didn't have well-funded parents, but once they
became successful, they attracted well-funded uncles and aunts. Not
far from our field,
Good examples. I guess they point out a third kind of parent - labor of
love by an individual, who somehow or other had enough of a backing by
someone to spend their time launching their baby.
Larry Wall was a programmer at Unisys, I believe working on the
"Blacker" project (something I had some peripheral involvement with in
my BBN days). Larry writes "Like the typical human, Perl was conceived
in secret, and existed for roughly nine months before anyone in the
world ever saw it. Its womb was a secret project for the National
Security Agency known as the “Blacker” project, which has long since
closed down. The goal of that sexy project was not to produce Perl.
However, Perl may well have been the most useful thing to come from
Blacker." (http://www.linux-mag.com/id/322).
Guido van Rossum was working at a research institute when he wrote
Python, and I assume they supported at least part of the time he put in.
Then he moved on to CNRI, which explicitly paid him to work on Python.
It's less clear what Rasmus Lerdof was doing when he wrote PHP, but it
seems he was programming for a living, and I get the sense that this
closer to an unfunded startup - a programmer developing some tools for
personal use, that he released into the wild.
Linux, of course, was the baby of Linus Torvald's thesis.
I guess, the Gnu project was born of Richard Stallman - but then
Stallman defies all categorization. He was sleeping under a desk at MIT
when he got started, later won a MacArthur Genius Grant, and everyone
around him has found ways to support him.
I would love to think of PostGIS and MapServer as
being fostered by well-heeled organizations, but while I wish
Refractions and DM Solutions all success, they have done tremendously
with their wards in spite of being small organizations.
Of course PostGIS is an extension to PosgreSQL which is a classic
example of a well-funded research project (initially the Ingres project
at UCB) spawning open source code. PostGIS might be a good example to
examine of extending an open source project.
How true when you say that "Each case is different."
My original sentiment still stands -- if you have the money, but don't
have the skills, and don't need it "yesterday," it might be better in
the long-term to fund an extension of a good OSS project than to take
the easy way out and buy a COTS package.
Absolutely.
--
Miles R. Fidelman, Director of Government Programs
Traverse Technologies
145 Tremont Street, 3rd Floor
Boston, MA 02111
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
617-395-8254
www.traversetechnologies.com
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