On Fri, May 01, 2009 at 10:32:41AM -0700, Brian Granger wrote: > I bring this up because I think we need to have better reasons about > why open source is important - arguments that are compelling to folks > who have been working successfully for years without reading the > source. I don't know what these are, but I know that we need them.
(Speaking as an outsider, not having contributed to Sage, but having contributed in small ways to several other projects.) When I find a bug, access to the source code allows me either to produce a strong test case _quickly_, or to produce a correct patch for the problem. Instead of punting the problem upstream, I can actually contribute directly. If the source is not available, I would need to spend additional time to build a sufficiently rich conceptual model of the black-box internals to be able to produce a decent test case. Why would anyone want to invest time in such activity? So by closing the source one is cutting down the pool of people who are going to have the incentive to contribute meaningfully. Only those who spend their days immersed in the environment of the particular software package, and the paid employees of the software company, will have the incentive to contribute meaningfully. The "casual" users are thus excluded from contributing to closed source systems. If the number and quality of the people inside the software ecosystem is sufficiently high, and remains high as the software and people age, then this doesn't matter: there will be sufficient force being applied to keep the system going. But over time projects that manage to harness contributions of those outside the magic circle are in a very strong position, since they can achieve much with few explicit resources. Few open source projects manage to effectively harness contributions from those outside: if the code is obscure, badly written, poorly documented, the inherent problems are very hard, the project is badly organized, or the project is subverted, then the external force of casual contributors is dissipated. The fourth in this list seems to be the point that RJF is focusing on, combined perhaps with an assessment that the total force is low, whereas William Stein seems to believe that the external force is great, and can be usefully harnessed. -- Andras Salamon andras.sala...@comlab.ox.ac.uk --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
