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NYT On Open Source

Posted by Roblimo on from the mostly-harmless dept.

KOHb writes: "The NY Times has a front-Web page article on using Open Source to bridge the "Software Gap." Mentions Mozilla, Apache, and other friends." Well-researched piece, talks of potential changes in software development -- both positive and negative -- as the Open Source model spreads. (Free, reg. req. to read.)

1 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Jim Gray? by Shoeboy · · Score: 5

    "This issue of open source cuts to the core of the software business," said Jim Gray, a Microsoft researcher and a member of the presidential advisory group. "It is a real challenge, masked by a great deal of hype."
    For those that don't know, Jim Gray is an ex-IBM, ex-DEC database guru who won a Turing Award for his book "Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques" (among other things)
    It's an amazing book (on my desk as we speak) and in it Jim bemoans the fact that DBMS technology has been hampered by the fact that most of the innovation was being done behind closed doors, thereby forcing coders to reinvent the wheel rather than advancing the state of the art.
    So then DEC implodes and Jim Gray goes to work for MS. I seem to recall that he got a 7 digit signing bonus. And now he's describing open source as a "challenge"
    I'm not suprised, but I'm more than a little saddened.
    --Shoeboy