Open Source Computing

Week 8, Mar 16

Wireshark is open source. It is licensed under the GPL, which makes particular sense for a project that hopes to get contributions for parsing all kinds of weird packet formats. I just discovered their "Project Host" is Riverbed, who makes commercial network-testing equipment.

How I earn a living selling my open source software -- by nemiah, who developed Open3A.

Somebody who open-sourced their first package: Why I didn't open-source my second SaaS. (His first project was an open-source service for which he also provided paid hosting.)

And let's not forget the new collaboration-assistance tool Zoom Escaper.

Linux History

Pick up at the section titled "Linux management"

The email from Linus Torvalds to Mauro Carvalho illustrates two things:
  1. Torvalds' somewhat abusive style
  2. Torvalds' firm no-regression policy: user code that used to work should never be broken by a kernel update.

How do these factors play out in the success of Linux?

A third factor is Torvalds' policy on contributions: all are welcome, but they start out as non-mainline extensions, patches or modules.

386BSD

Bash and LibreOffice

Open-source management

Cathedral v Bazaar