noncommercial software and resource horizons
Clay Shirky writes:
Commercial software has its limits, and it runs into them regularly. Any commercial developer has a "resource horizon" - some upper boundary of money or programmer time which limits how much can be done on any given project. Projects which lie over this horizon either can't be accomplished (very few companies could write a new operating system from scratch), or, once started, can't be completed because of their size or scope (as with the Denver Airport baggage handling system).Open Source software has no such resource horizon - programmers creating Open Source software do it because they're interested in it, not because they're paid to do it. Furthermore, since there's no requirement to keep the source code secret, a much larger of number of programmers can work on any given project, and they don't have to work for the same company, or even live in the same country.
However, the lack of this resource horizon does not mean that Open Source software has no limits, it just means that the limits aren't financial. Commercial companies make software for money, so money is the limiting factor. Open Source developers make software for the love of the thing, so love becomes the limiting factor as well. Unloved software can't be built using Open Source methods.[....]
posted Thu 8 May 2003 in /software/opensource | link
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