OSDev.org

Open Sourcery is the new magical approach to software design that is replacing the old machine-minded methods. Basically, it works like this; Someone sets up a CVS repository and a bug tracking system, and an FTP server, and most importantly a website to state the goals and status of the project. Then as many Open Sourcerers as possible start arguing about what the software should actually do (positive energy), and complaining that it isnt being done fast enough (negative energy). Eventually, the software will write itself, and will continue to evolve itself gradually until it reaches the stage of maturity know to Open Sourcerers as Alpha (which is Latin for "Done"). Occasionally a piece of software will continue to grow beyond the alpha stage until it becomes Beta (which is Latin for "Im bored, lets do something else").

Solar wrote: Hilarious... if it weren't all too true, especially the Alpha / Beta part. From http://hamsterrepublic.com/james/technomancy/ :

Open Sourcery is the new magical approach to software design that is replacing the old machine-minded methods. Basically, it works like this; Someone sets up a CVS repository and a bug tracking system, and an FTP server, and most importantly a website to state the goals and status of the project. Then as many Open Sourcerers as possible start arguing about what the software should actually do (positive energy), and complaining that it isnt being done fast enough (negative energy). Eventually, the software will write itself, and will continue to evolve itself gradually until it reaches the stage of maturity know to Open Sourcerers as Alpha (which is Latin for "Done"). Occasionally a piece of software will continue to grow beyond the alpha stage until it becomes Beta (which is Latin for "Im bored, lets do something else").

srg wrote: Still at least when they do finally gets to stable, it really is stable.

Solar wrote:

srg wrote: Still at least when they do finally gets to stable, it really is stable.

Not more so than the work of an averagely self-respecting shareware programmer. I don't believe in the "added security" of Open Source, except in widely used security centric applications.

So, while I prefer an OSS SSH / PGP / SSL implementation over closed source implementations anytime, I really don't care whether my file browser, editor, or web browser are "free" or not. To the contrary, I am under the impression that Shareware tends to be more polished, especially in the UI / doc department.