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IP: Daily Report from The Chronicle of Higher Education (fwd)
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2001 07:36:04 -0500
From: jod () ccat sas upenn edu (James J. O'Donnell) Dave, I do *not* endorse this article, but in the spirit of IP provocation pass it along for stimulation. jo'd MAGAZINES & JOURNALS A glance at the fall issue of "The Milken Institute Review": The future of open-source software David Evans, a consultant with National Economic Research Associates, an economic-consulting company, examines the different motives driving open-source and proprietary software and ponders the future of the former. The motivations for following a proprietary model, he writes, are "easily understood -- it's about making money." Open-sourcers, by contrast, create software for a number of reasons, few of them motivated by material gain. Some simply enjoy writing code, some crave recognition as skilled programmers, some think it will enhance their resumes. But those reasons, combined with some licensing models that threaten proprietary copyrights, do not bode well for the industry's sustainability. In essence, Mr. Evans writes, without the motivation of personal gain, open-source programmers might not be willing to work on projects that, while uninteresting and unchallenging, are necessary to make open-source software appeal to a wide audience. And the often rough-edged and technical products, while allowing users to tinker with them, have a limited appeal. In the end, open-source software is written by techies for techies, and if that narrow audience is catered to, open-source might have a promising, if unprofitable, future. But if open-sourcers attempt to appeal to the masses -- by, say, marketing Linux as a mainstream operating system -- they might institutionalize and overextend themselves out of existence. The article is available online at http://www.milkeninstitute.org/poe.cfm?point=review (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader, available free at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html).
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- IP: Daily Report from The Chronicle of Higher Education (fwd) David Farber (Dec 07)