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Re: Sunday, December 30, 2001
If construction is going to be the metaphor for open source, then perhaps the people writing the code are more like people associated with Habitat for Humanity (I'm on the local Board of Directors, so I'm a volunteer). Some are volunteers, some make donations, some sell products or services (sometimes even at a discount). The intention is always to do something useful and well intentioned to improve the quality of life, even if it is only one family at a time. The Object Oriented seminars, such as those for SmallTalk, liked to describe the process a few years ago as reuseable components, using a manufacturing methaphor, rather than a construction metaphor, whereby programming was like working on an assembly line. Hopefully, open source and "free" software will not become, or be percieved as, the manufactured housing of the software industry: cheap and low quality double-wides on wheels, following minimum standards.
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