From: jim t.p. ryan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 9:19 AM
Subject: Re: Free software in business (was maddog speaks)
Derek,
I'm still confused. How was sendmail and Apache originally created? What
do those people do for a living? How do they make their money? I'm not
being a wise guy here, I really want to understand how software would work
in a completly open source world. I mean if I'm a programmer by trade and I
want to feed my family how do I do it in this model? Maybe I'm being overly
simplistic but I like the concept, I just don't fully get it.
It scratched an itch. Why would a community get together, clear a patch
of forest, and put up a baseball diamond? Without *GASP!* getting paid for
it.. I happen to put a good deal of work into an open source instant
messaging project, to the point where my names in the rfc (How's that for
geek status, yet another reason).
The thing to remember is, when open source projects start, RARELY do they
understand the scope that the project may come to. Look at Linux. Linus
had *NO CLUE* how big it would become. He didn't start writing it with the
intentions of creating the OS. He did it becouse he wanted to. He shared
what he managed to hack out. Others hacked onto it. That got exciting, it
now did even more. He did some more with it. Then it started to grow. An
example of this functioning in real life is found at
http://www.apache.org/ABOUT_APACHE.html which gives a brief historical
rundown of 'how it started'.
Now person, I do it becouse it excites me. To work on something that
grows. No one to tell you 'this is how it should go', or 'this is how it
should be done'. You go off on your merry way and create. When several
developers working on the same thing with a common vision, and the same
excitment about the project, you get good, quality code. You also end up
with less marketting features, and more really needed features. I think
much of IIS, as an example, was actually designed by a marketing group, to
push their other products even further, and certainly NOT to design and
build a world class, fast, nevergoesdown HTTP server.
It all goes back to the ballfield, but you don;t have to get as dirty..
;-P
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