| Chapter 2: In the Beginning … | |
| Casey Bisson | |
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| Abstract |
Library Technology Reports 43:3 (May/Jun 2007) “In the 70s, computer users lost the freedoms to redistribute and change software because they didn't value their freedom. Computer users regained these freedoms in the 80s and 90s because a group of idealists, the GNU Project, believed that freedom is what makes a program better, and were willing to work for what we believed in.” — “Linux, GNU, and Freedom,” by Richard M. Stallman, Free Software Foundation Founder Casey Bisson, with the help of Jessamyn West and Ryan Eby, reports on open-source software (OSS) and its use and importance in libraries in the third issue of Library Technology Reports in 2007. In “Open-Source Software for Libraries,” Bisson engagingly narrates the history of open source, explains how the OSS “movement” came about, details key players in OSS development, and discusses why and how open source can work for libraries. Bisson also shares success stories from those in libraries using OSS including:
In addition to Bisson's insightful and interesting discussion of OSS, this issue of LTR includes the informative chapter “Open-Source Software on the Desktop,” by community technology librarian Jessamyn West. Also, Ryan Eby, “an active member of the Code4Lib community” provides an overview of open-source server applications, including that of ILS apps Koha and Evergreen; digital library and repository software, such as DSpace and FEDORA; and OPAC replacements, such as Scriblio and SOPAC. About the Authors Casey Bisson, named among Library Journal‘s Movers & Shakers for 2007 and recipient of a 2006 Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration for developing Scriblio (formerly WPopac), is an information architect at Plymouth State University. He is a frequent presenter at library and technology conferences and blogs about his passion for libraries, roadside oddities, and hiking in New Hampshire's White Mountains at MaisonBisson.com Jessamyn West is a community technology librarian and a moderator of the massive group blog MetaFilter.com. She lives in Central Vermont, where she teaches basic computer skills to novice computer users and librarians. She maintains an online presence at jessamyn.com and librarian.net. Her favorite color is orange. Ryan Eby is active member of the Code4Lib community and spends his days supporting distance learners and online courses at Michigan State University. He blogs at blog.ryaneby.com and can often be found on the #code4lib IRC channel. He enjoys brewing his own beer and roasting his own coffee. |
It might be said that software was open source from its earliest days. Myth-maker and journalist Steven Levy tells the story in Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution for those who weren't there: From MIT's famously un-passworded computers to members of Silicon Valley's Homebrew Computer Club, enthusiasts were trading and actively improving on each other's software.
The first computers came with little software, and there existed no real commercial marketplace for software. People wrote their own because they needed to, and they shared their software because doing so saved everybody “the dread, time-wasting ritual of re-inventing the wheel.”1 And that sharing produced better software.2
Unlike today's networked communities, geeks of that day often worked in close proximity and could identify members of their group personally or by voice, as well as by their initials or the peculiarities of their code.
And so, without much formality, a programmer knew that sharing code was inviting others to take and reuse pieces of it or add unsolicited improvements or features.3 The best of these improvements, unsolicited or otherwise, were often called “hacks.”
To qualify as a “hack,” the feat must be imbued with innovation, style, and technical virtuosity.4
Those hacks might improve performance or add a feature, but an individual hack, in computing terms, was rarely cut from whole cloth. Programmers looked to each other's software for clues, but also for opportunities to show one's mettle. Competition among programmers was often fierce, turning into
a macho contest to prove oneself so much in command of the system that one could recognize elegant shortcuts to shave an instruction or two, or, better yet, rethink the problem and devise a new algorithm which would save a whole block of instructions.5
Levy's history glosses what must have been some tumultuous arguments, though a hint of them can be found in Gerald Weinberg's concept of “egoless programming,” introduced in his 1971 book, The Psychology of Computer Programming. Peer review is harsh, especially when it's misunderstood as personal criticism. Weinberger was formalizing what many programming teams had seen from the start: errors are human nature, and teamwork leads to better results faster.6 And teams that are, as Builder.com describes it in its Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming, “kind to the coder, not to the code,”
do best.7
And the motivation to do well, to produce great code, was in creating tools that all members of the team would use, for as Levy notes:
When you wrote a fine program you were building a community, not churning out a product.8
Notes
| 1. | Levy, Steven. , . Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. New York: Penguin; 2001. p. 41 |
| 2. | Richard Stallman, “The GNU Project” (originally published in the book Open Sources), GNU Operating System Web site, www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html (accessed Mar. 19, 2007). |
| 3. | Levy, Hackers, 56. |
| 4. | Ibid., 23. |
| 5. | Ibid., 44. |
| 6. | Gerald M. Weinberg, “Egoless Programming,” IEEE Software 16 no. 1 (Jan./Feb.1999): 118–20. |
| 7. | Quoted in Lamont Adams, “Download the Builder.com Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming,” June 6, 2002, Builder.com Web site, http://builder.com.com/5100-6404-1045782.html (accessed Mar. 19, 2007). |
| 8. | Levy, Hackers, 56. |
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