rules, this way: “everybody contributes, so everybody benefits.” Unlike the GPL, I make a very solid distinction
between distribution as part of a commercial endeavor and distribution not as part of a commercial endeavor....
The philosophical weight of this is that if you want to play by cooperative rules, you get the benefits of Aladdin’s work within the context of those rules. If you are not playing by the cooperative rules, then it’s going to cost you something to have the rights to get the value from Aladdin software.
In many ways, the heart of many open-source com- munities is a social compact between a software devel- oper and his or her users, in which both agree to cooperate under certain rules that are beneficial to both parties. At best, this is also true of developer communities that evolve around proprietary prod- ucts; the point is that open source substitutes cooper- ation for financial transactions as the glue that ties the community together.
The Importance of Extensibility
Licenses that lower the barriers to cooperation are a key part of the open-source phenomenon. However, as both Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall argue, part of the success of their creations has also come from technical decisions that have made it easier for oth- ers to contribute. According to Linus Torvalds, Linux has succeeded at least in part because it fol- lowed good design principles, which allowed it to be extended in ways that he didn’t envision when he started work on the kernel. Similarly, Larry Wall explains how he created Perl in such a way that its feature-set could evolve naturally, as human lan- guages evolve, in response to the needs of its users.
In fact, many successful open-source projects have a modular architecture, which allows users to extend the system’s functionality without having to change existing core functionality. This allows an open-source project to scale with its community while allowing an original visionary developer (or team) to retain con- trol over the core product.
Obviously, one of the areas for study is where the ideal boundary ought to be between a core product controlled by a single individual or small team, and the input of the user community.
Commercial Product Development on an Open-Source Base
Large companies are not the only players trying to understand where the boundaries are between com- mercial development and community-based open- source development.
It is of course the great challenge for open source to prove it can create products that are accessible to non- technical users. Many open-source developers are exper- imenting to find the best way for their work to “cross the chasm” from early adopters to a wider market.
In his contribution to this section, John Ouster- hout argues there is a natural complementarity between open source and commercial development. Open source provides raw material, if you will, that can be further refined and extended by commercial development.
Dick Hardt of ActiveState, which creates Perl prod- ucts for the Win32 platform, makes a similar argu- ment. In a presentation given at a recent Perl conference, Hardt used the metaphor of logs and lum- ber. Open source, he argued, is a great way to produce logs. But while there are users who are happy to build log cabins, or to split their own logs into lumber, a wider class of users can be reached if companies provide “lumber” in the form of pre-built binaries, value-added interfaces or development environments, documenta- tion, and other elements of commercial products.
Of course, there is a continuing discussion in the open-source community about the best way to pro- vide such commercial development. A company such as Red Hat, which distributes Linux, is firmly com- mitted to the GNU Public License, even for their value-added extensions. Their argument is that pack- aging, brand, and channels of distribution are suffi- cient to protect their market and give them an acceptable return on their investment.
Other companies, such as Ousterhout’s Scriptics, Allman’s Sendmail, Inc., and Hardt’s ActiveState Tool Corp., are taking a hybrid approach, providing both a rich open-source product base and proprietary value- added extensions. Strong partisans of the GPL and the strict Open Source Definition (see www.open- source.org/osd.html) might find fault with such efforts. Ultimately, though, experimentation in the market will tell us more than philosophical debates whether an open-source license (or simply an open architecture), access to source code (even if only on the basis of a paid license), or tools for integrating the user community into the development process, are the most important elements in the continuing success and scalability of open-source projects. c
Tim O’Reilly (tim@oreilly.com) is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly & Associates, a leading publisher of books about open-source software. He convened the first “Open Source Summit” in 1998 to bring together the leaders of major open-source communities and has been active in promoting the Open Source Initiative through writing, speaking, and conferences.
Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.Your dog is barking at night, always.
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..