Open Source

On his website, Josh Reisner writes why he thinks ‘Open Source Rules.’

Just to follow up on my earlier debacle/discovery with PostCommitWebHooks, an Italian PHP coder seems to have picked up the script I posted to the Google thread and added to it considerably!

The script I wrote listens for updates from Google's server and maintains a record of those updates. This coder's script takes those updates and gets the actual changed files and maintains a local copy.

I can already think of a nice way to extend his update: write a script that presents that local cache of files as a single ZIP you can download. I suppose the reason they don't offer that is because they want you to connect over SVN. But I think a lot of people might want to use the code but don't want to bother checking it out, at least at first.

Anyway, moral of the story: open source is great.

I Agree. Like Reisner, many coders write scripts/codes to help improve the Internet experience. Now, it is not just browsers, but also Operating Systems like Linux, games and applications for technology like the iPhone that are Open Source. In the case of Firefox, several coders helped make it a bastion of Web browsers. From the time Internet Explorer took over much of the market share, to what it is now, Microsoft has nothing to blame but its laid-back approach and the many open source coders.

In a blog post, I had said that Wikipedia works because it is a labor of love. And I guess what makes Open Source work, is that it is also a labor of love. Although both have very socialistic concepts backing them, they are both democratic in nature – being run by, for and of the people. With the many nicknamed, faceless, characters that make this concept work, multinational corporations like Microsoft have had to take notice and improve themselves.

I wonder if there will be a time when we don’t have to buy software.