Too many topics, too little time

Lessons from studying open-source communities. Mike Martin, Scientific Research Backs Wisdom of Open Source, NewsFactor Sci-Tech, December 15, 2003. (Thanks to Garrett Eastman.) New scientific studies of how open-source communities build and debug software conclude that the process is more complex and more effective than usually thought. Quoting Walt Scacchi, a senior research scientist at UC Irvine's Institute for Software Research: “Open-source is not a poor version of software engineering, but a private-collective approach to large-software systems.” Quoting Suzanne Iacono, NSF program director: “The software-intensive systems in today's world have become so complex that we need every available design tool at our disposal. Open-source development has achieved some remarkable successes, and we need to learn from these successes as our systems become increasingly distributed, complex and heterogeneous.” (PS: The complexity of scientific problems, and the benefits of collaboration, suggest that much of this research will transfer from open source to open access.) [Open Access News]