Reflections on Dicussion on The Cathedral and the Bazaar

I thought everyone who spoke durinng the dicussion made some really good points on the pros and cons of closed-source and open-source software. As a student open-source is very advantageous for us because there is so many projects and tools for us to work with that we might not have access to if they were not open-sourced by the company or might not be able to afford if the company charged for them. Without a strong open-source culture there are less resources for students to learn and for developers to build off of for them to build the next great thing.

Reflections on Gil’s Talk

Gil’s talk provided good insights on how big companies view open-source and how they leverage it to their own advantage. I thought it was interesting how he did not like open-source when he started in the industry a few decades ago and has slowly grown to like it. I think it closely mirrors the trends and attitudes among the industry over the past twenty or so years. I also found it interesting how big companies want to use open-source to take advantage of the free software but also have teams dedicated to mitigating the down sides of open-source namely the lack of dedicated support, unpredictability of where the project will head, etc.