"Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging."
"Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost
every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone"
(Torvalds: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.")
"If you treat your beta -testers as if they are your most valuable
resource, they will respond by becoming your most valuable resource."
"Provided the development coordinator has a communications medium
at least as good at the Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion,
many heads are inevitably better than one."
Itch --> scratching --> risk minimization through open sourcing.
Some important questions:
Is OSS sustainable? Are the paybacks worth the investments?
How are the market leaders (e.g., MacroMedia, Microsoft, IBM, HP) going
to react/position themselves?
If users mostly download the binaries and not the source code,
does it matter that it's open? (F&F p. 173).
If, as people such as Larry McVoy (SCO, Sun) claim, open source is
only possible because for-profit/closed-source companies allow their engineers
to contribute code, isn't open source killing its supplier? (Moody, p. 314).
