Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Fri 30th May 2003 02:18 UTC
Thursday here, a slow evening. Time for a new poll. This poll might require you to think a bit extra: it asks you to vote not for your favorite application, but which OSS application, in your opinion, has achieved high standards, performance, features and ease of use when compared to the best of breed of the closed source world. Read more for more explanation and voting.
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What makes successful OSS projects?
GCC is on top because it allows open source and manufacturers to interface easily. I'd venture that chips like Opteron probably had the GCC compiler in-house while the chip was on still the drawing board. It provides a vendor one module to create to access lots of software. It also provides hobbiests with one base to port projects to new platforms!
Apache is on top because it basicly created the web server market. It's probably the exception to every rule about OSS success.
Mozilla claims to suffer from poor independant developer support. Why? What makes the project inaccessable to little people. I'd venture that the large scope and language choices set it out of reach of most casual web builders. Unlike say...
PHP and MySql are very successful with little people, but the core tech is held by private companies. I'd venture that it's because both projects have bite-size pieces that make them very accessable to little people.
WWW of course is very successful again because it's filled with little people.
What design choices should be made to keep a project little-people-friendly? The choices may not be technically the best, but would allow the highest number of people to contribute meaningfully to the project. I'd venture that C++ would have to go. It's not bad, but the complexity boots most little people right out. JIT languages seem to be most popular with casual users. But it's more about bite-size pieces than language particulars.
This is getting too long....bye