Open source's next frontier

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And some additional thoughts

Like the IT User above, I have been doing this for quite a while.

When I first started in this business everything was 'open source' in that we could freely discuss with our 'network' of colleagues to resolve a sticky problem. Companies didn't really view application code as being a thing of tangible value. It was more a matter of trade secret where we couldn't discuss the internal procedures of the company but we could discuss common solutions to problems and even share these solutions.

Then... software became valuable in and of itself and thus became proprietary. Programmers got benefit because this demonstrated the direct value of their effort rather than the indirect value. However, that didn't change the value of the effort it only changed the perceived value of the effort.

Open source is simply another step along the way. Even at ZD there are articles pointing out the difficulty of finding programmers who can 'stitch the apps together' - i.e. implement various open source components into a seamless app. In my middle days these people were frequently called 'Maintenance Programmers'.

As long as business retains it's basic aspect of changing to meet the changing times there will be a need for programmers to make the changes to the supporting apps in reaction. The more apps there are out there, the more programmers needed to keep them running.

The (highly skilled) people working on Apache these days are simply Software Maintenance experts who do really develop anything spectacularly new.. they only provide spectacularly efficient small steps to improve the product every day. This need does not go away regardless of the improved tools.

Posted by: DaveCollet   Posted on: 11/22/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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