A few comments:
1. Open source funding. I can totally understand how it is to agonize
over doing something because it's right versus doing something for
survival. Ultimately, people who do open source software (or any similar
sort of societal contributions) are conscious of the tradeoffs. One
important phenomenon with open source software right now is that ways to
contribute without completely sacrificing monetary rewards are becoming
more apparent.
2. Funding for the OHS. The general climate for obtaining funding for the
OHS seems more appropriate then it did in years past. There are also
alternative ways of obtaining funding that haven't been adequately
explored, but that Doug has been more than open to discussing. There are
obviously no guarantees, especially when you're depending on so much
voluntary time, but there have been some efforts in this direction, so
let's wait and see what happens.
I personally don't think that funding will be necessary to get an initial
version of the OHS out and ready for bootstrapping, although it would
certainly be nice. I also think that there are several good businesses
that can arise from the OHS once some initial work has been done, and the
people who contribute to the OHS now will be in a good position to profit
from these opportunities, if they so choose.
3. Purpose of this list. As Paul has pointed out, this list was created
as an outlet for offline colloquium discussion, not for the development of
the OHS. And I think it serves its purpose well in that regard. In my
opinion, there is a need for a separate list devoted exclusively to the
development of the OHS. This is something that will likely happen in the
near future.
4. The waterfall model. Contrary to how it may currently look, the OHS
will not be developed under the waterfall model, which in my opinion
violates the notion of bootstrapping. We will hopefully follow more of an
extreme programming methodology, with a great emphasis on prototyping and
rapid development cycles. Fortunately, we already have a wonderful
prototype in the form of the Augment/NLS system.
As some of you may be aware, a group of us have been meeting regularly in
the Bay Area to plan and design the OHS. However anxious people may be to
see an initial release of code, let me emphasize that this first design
phase is an extremely important one. Our group consists of people of
disparate backgrounds and levels of experience, and it's important that we
all be on the same page both conceptually and technically before we can
start making intelligent technical and organizational decisions. Let me
reiterate, however, that this initial delay in releasing code is not
indicative of us following the waterfall model of software development.
I think we're moving in the right direction, and I'm optimistic about the
amount of progress we will see in the next month. I wouldn't be surprised
if, by the end of May, we had a license, an organizational model, a
distributed coding infrastructure (mailing lists, CVS, etc.), a specific
technical direction, and a small set of requirements for the first rev.
We may even see some progress in regards to funding.
-Eugene
-- +=== Eugene Eric Kim ===== eekim@eekim.com ===== http://www.eekim.com/ ===+ | "Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they | +===== can have an excuse to drink alcohol." --Steve Martin ===========+------------------------------------------------------------------------ beMANY! has a new way to save big on your phone bill -- and keep on saving more each month: Our huge buying group gives you Long Distance rates which fall monthly, plus an extra $60 in FREE calls! http://click.egroups.com/1/3821/4/_/444287/_/957936201/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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