>On Wednesday, May 2, 2001 at 21:20:47 (-0700) Brad DeLong writes:
>> .... Is there
>>something specific about software that makes the open-source
>>management problem particularly easy? Or can we look forward to the
>>development of similar collective freeware intellectual efforts in
>>other areas as well?
>
>Software techniques and modern software language features allow you to
>decompose problems fairly readily. This decoupling of various parts
>allows you to work in common on describing what is to be done by
>designing the "interfaces" and then to work in smaller groups on how
>to implement the needed functionality described in the various
>interfaces. This, coupled with software that is designed to allow
>developers to share code and to work concurrently on the same body of
>code (this software is usually known as "source code control"
>software, a popular example is CVS), makes it relatively easy to do.
>
>An example is the writing of a stopwatch program. You might discuss
>what the interface would be like: you need to start it, stop it, get
>the elapsed time, etc. So, you'd need three functions to implement
>this, and given a bit more info (what the internal data type looks
>like and a bit more description), the three functions could be coded
>by three developers in three separate source code files that resided
>on the same central machine but were shared via the internet through a
>version control system.
>
>There are some aspects of this type of work that are difficult,
>though: the communication medium is very inefficient compared to
>face-to-face interchange. Imagine Crick and Watson sitting on
>opposite coasts and trying to work out ideas via e-mail. It can be
>quite difficult without face-to-face communication, but you can
>compensate by being careful in what you write and learning others'
>assumptions, styles, etc.
>
>I might also add that software is written in very highly constrained
>languages, so perhaps writing natural language texts would be more
>difficult, but perhaps not.
>
>
>Bill
Good and interesting points. I wish you had a bottom line, but I
think you would be foolhardy to have one at this stage...
