Literature Review 1

Author: Steve Weber

Title: What is Open Source?

Where: http://hfoss-fossrit.rhcloud.com/static/books/Weber-SuccessofOpenSource-Chap3.pdf

When: 2004

The Gist:

   Chapter 3 of the book "The Success of Open Source" focuses on explaining what open source is, how it functions, and how it is organized.  It highlights problems within software development and shows how Open Source is a great way to fix and minimize these problems.  This chapter also demonstrates how successful Open Source can be over commercial software development, and portrays Open Source projects as constantly evolving, self building systems.

The Good:

   I thought the author did a great job explaining how Open Source projects function, and how arguments are settled within contributor communities.  I also found it interesting to see the extreme diversity among the developers within Open Source communities, and how the author brings up the point that the studies show that most developers are contributing on their own free time.  Lastly, I was impressed to learn how Open Source software so successfully almost builds itself, in the sense that people latch onto projects and constantly work on issues in a parallel fashion.

The Bad:

   I thought this chapter was a bit too wordy in spots.  I thought the middle section portrayed more data than was necessary.  I would have liked the author to clarify more about the different licensing within Open Source.

The Questions:

   -How exactly could someone profit from Open Source Software, especially as the initial developer?

   -What are some statistics on how many machines run Open Source Operating Systems and apps?

   -We've seen highlighted ways in which Open Source trumps commercial software development, but what areas does it severely fall short?

My Review:

   In general, I found this reading to be surprisingly interesting.  I noticed myself feeling very intrigued by how Open Source Software seems to be a way that I could put up an idea and some code, and watch it evolve and build itself into something that I probably never would have been able to produce otherwise.  It was also interesting to see how ordered an Open Source project can be despite sounding very chaotic.  The article itself was quite long and wordy, but conveyed a lot of information.

Rating: 7/10