Open Source?

As a Computer Science student, i am slowly becoming more familiar with the idea of open source software. Although i have used plenty of open source software before, I never had a real sense for what it was. As we move forward with the curriculum in this class i am becoming more and more familiar with how these projects work.

Eric S. Raymond's "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" really motivated me to contribute explore open source more deeply and to get a better idea of what open source actually is. Raymond discusses how open source compares to the idea of a "Bazaar", rather than the idea of a "Cathedral". The cathedral compares to projects that are meticulously planned out and have planned releases. The Bazaar compares to open source projects that are released often and have many developers. Raymond's exploration into why these "Bazaar" projects work is very interesting. I think that the exploration into social context and why developers actually tend to contribute is an interesting topic. Why do developers actually devote time to these projects? Raymond's explanations answered these questions well. "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" was a refreshing article and i think it renewed my interest in contributing towards a project for this class.


Class Progress:
Team Handicapped made progress by joining IRC channels for OpenMRS project. It seems that these channels are still very active and that development is still very much alive. Our team also joined mailing list. Funny to me, receiving these emails really reflect the "release and release often" phrase. I am getting about 3 to 4 emails every couple of hours. Seems like OpenMRS will be a valuable project.