Month: March 2019

People like to feel like they are a part of something larger than themselves. A few classes ago, when Professor Bui showed that you could add something to the calculator in windows most of the class, me included, were very excited by the idea. The thought of being able to be part of such a big project, knowing that something you did was used all around the world is exhilarating. People have always wanted to belong, we are social creatures, and open source is a society with far reaching goals. Open source provides people with the opportunity to work on projects that they are interested in, for as long or as short as their interest remains, and then move onto the next project, all while feeling like you are contributing to something that will help the larger good. Mozilla, one of the big names in open source, has the goal to create a free, open and safe internet for everyone. These kind of lofty goals inspire people to become part of the community. To in some small way add their voice and their talents to those already working on it. To leave their mark on history. The sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves is what attracts people to open source. It is a way to be ambitious in life, while still remaining relatively protected from risk. This is the theory and the principle behind Open Source, however, in practice it is not as clean as it sounds. While there is a push for welcoming in the Open Source community, there is a certain stigma associated with it. Projects are controlled by moderators, who may decide what is good and what is not. The free code sharing of the homebrew computer club exists in spirit, but there is, again, a stigma attached to forking another’s project. The idea of open source in theory is that people should freely trade code with each other and expect no recognition for the work they are done, they should be working for their own enjoyment. However, to go along with people liking to feel like they belong, they also like to be recognized for their work. Therefore it is expected that contributors are listed to a project and that a project is not simply forked by another party to add to it on their own. What I have seen happening, with what we talked about this week and with my own experiences, it the open source community moving toward where the homebrew computer club moved to. Bill Gates wanted to be recognized for his work just like people who contribute to open source. This is not necessarily a bad thing so long as it is only in moderation. It costs nothing to add a contributors name to a README, but if people continue the push for recognition they will end up moving away from open source and solely write code they are paid to write. I do not think or want this to happen, and so the open source community will have to make itself healthy. The stigma around forking should be removed, people should be able to share code freely and openly, however, they should also be recognized for their contributions in some small way. Most people who work on open source would be more than satisfied to see their name listed as a contributor to windows, even if it is only in the calculator.

A cathedral is predesigned and every brick is placed with a purpose, it has no use until it is totally complete. A bazaar is a sum of its parts. A bazaar is like the question how much is a handful of sand. If you take away every contributor but one at what point is it no longer a handful, or the other way at what point does it become a handful. In the case of code, the cathedral is generally proprietary code, something that a team will work on, usually for a company and eventually it will be released. A bazaar is a group of people working together, generally in open source, all to varying degrees and all to create some end product that none of them probably have a full grasp of. An open source project like a bazaar starts with one contributor, or one merchant, but more and more people will come to buy or to set up stands and add parts to the bazaar. Eventually there are many many people working on and with the product. I feel like both the cathedral and the bazaar have the positive points. Take for instance an open source program that handles credit card purchases. It would be very easy for one of the contributors to add code that copies all credit card information as the card is being processed. Similarly open source projects are great for applications like Firefox. Because of its open source nature it is able to be both better and more customizable for the user. So much is able to be added, tested and improved upon because so many different people are able to work on the project. I don’t really think there is an answer for which type of programming is better the cathedral or the bazaar. I feel like a mix of both is needed. Take the security industry for example. While a certain amount of secrecy is required to ensure that the customers are not at risk, common practice is to release the projects to the community as early and as often as possible so that more hands can be on the project, trying to break the security and see where any faults may lie. This requires a combination between a cathedral and a bazaar.

In my experience I have dealt with more cathedral style programming, however, I really like the idea of bazaar style programing. I love the application Maya. However, it costs $1500 for a non educational license. The idea of blender, a product that would do many of the same things as Maya, but that I could also work on to improve it is great. Not only is it free, it has a great community behind it working to always make it better. I feel like we will see a move to this blended style of development. Where companies will take advantage of the bazaar that exists to make their cathedral better. I think Microsoft is a prime example of this, put your programs that you charge people for into open source so that other people can fix the bugs for you and you can have a better product for minimal cost and improved community standing. This also allows new eyes to constantly be looking at it as people get bored with the project. Because like in a bazaar the customer is the most important, if they get a better product for cheaper they will keep visiting the cathedral even if its built on a bazaar.

Paul Graham is a lottery winner telling everyone who will listen the best way to get rich is to play the lottery. It has worked for a hundred years, why not get in on the money train. Bo Burnham in his stand up special had a bit where he talked about success. He said to not look for inspiration from people who are celebrities or extremely successful. He compares Taylor Swift to a lottery winner. For every Taylor Swift, Bo Burnham, Paul Graham, or Mark Zuckerberg there are hundreds if not thousands of people who weren’t successful. Think about Mark Zuckerberg, he is very rich and most people in the United States know his name, but the Winklevoss Twins who had a very similar idea are neither of those things. The only reason they are known is because Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea and made facebook, then someone else made a movie about their missed opportunity. As it is, most people think of them as jerks who were played by Armie Hammer, not what they did. But even the Winklevoss Twins are an exception. In most cases you don’t win the lottery. For every successful startup out there there are hundreds of startups that just don’t make it. I feel like there will always have to be people willing to take the chance to risk it all on their startup, or their musical career, or what have you, that is the only way to truly innovate. Startups and new stars change the game and advance society, but it is not for everyone. There is a film called The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit about a man trying to find his place in society after the Second World War. In the film, he meets with the founder of the company he is working at who explains that some people are willing to only be nine to fivers and live a life with their family, while others are people who will focus on their work to the exclusion of all else. This is not exactly the distinction Graham is making but parallels can be seen. People who go into startups as a get rich quick scheme are doing it at the chance of losing everything. Society will always encourage people to push the docket, to strive for the start up and risk taking in the chance of getting extremely rich, however, the majority of people do not ever achieve this and some do not even try and that is perfectly fine. People should be encouraged to push the envelope to potentially achieve incredible risks. But when Paul Graham talks about getting rich by working at a startup as a sure thing, it falls flat of what real life will be like. If every person in class started to work at different startups, maybe one of us would end up rich. I feel this is especially true now, tech used to be the wild west, no one truly understood the field and everything was always up in the air, but now it has become more like other fields and settled down to a degree. One thing Graham was right about though is that you don’t need to be rich to live well. A person today can live a very comfortable life, without being considered rich, and that is fine for some people. Some people will always be content to live life comfortable instead of stupidly rich.