Tue 16 Mar 2004
Although Oren Cass ‘04 doesn’t blog enough on Williams, his thesis topic does look interesting.
These two issues: In what ways does Open Source improve an economy through both its production and distribution processes, and how should the state respond, are the topics of my thesis work and will be discussed on this page for the next nine months.
For those not among the tribe of geekdom, “Open Source” refers to software programs whose code is “open” for all to see and modify. The best introduction to the land of Open Source, as Cass no doubt knows, is The Cathedral and The Bazaar by Eric Raymond. I try my hardest to use nothing but open source and to contribute, in a very small way, back to the open source community.
One could also see EphBlog as an open source version of this, this or even this, but I mean that in a good way.
One of the purposes of this blog is to introduce interested alums in work being done by current students (as well as vice versa, of course), so we would be interested in links to other such projects, whether thesis-related or otherwise.
March 16th, 2004 at 3:49 pm
Incidentally, EphBlog runs MovableType which is to some extent open source (if I recall of the license, not as open as some, but certainly open in the sense that can read the source code if I am so inclined).
The server software that we are on is Apache webserver - open source. The OS that is sits on top of it FreeBSD… open source.
Many businesses, cities, counties, states, and even countries are moving to open source products instead of options such as Microsoft due largely at this point to security and virus concerns.
To date, my only real programming contribution to the open source world is a SpamAssassin hack to get it working on MS Exchange 2000/2003.
The easiest way to make real contributions to the open source world is via donating money. Doing so via writing code requires a relatively high level of wealth - either in actual money or in free time.
That is why frequently a lot of the really cool work is done at work - whether allowed by the employer or not.
The way I see it, open source helps the whole, but at the cost of the individual(s) that created it. Perhaps why until recently a large portion of the open source creative world was in Europe - it is a very socialist idea/concept.