wouldn't it be cool if...

eriksmoen

wouldn't it be cool if big/major sites would participate in open source (of ones that don't already)... just think...
openGoogle
openMicrosoft
etc...
Just imagine the knowledge that could be gained... well, besides that which could be aquired from M$... Just think about how much better their sites could be if people could edit and submit their modified version of their code. This would make sites pretty much indestructable (being that no cracker would slip a bugged version through their program reviewers).

Anyhow, thats just my random thought for the day. Tell me what you think about the issue...

_SuperString

But your forgeting about IT Managers Budget, they need to spend (waste) it somewhere... and giving it to MS is a very common way to accomplish this. If MS went Open Source then companies would have no (real) support (not that they really do anyway), and you would have cowboys supporting them all over the place. The cowboys would then go out of business (and start-up again under a new name), the companies would have unsupported systems all over the place - and need to get in someone who is not opensource to sort it all out... costing a fortune. MS would not get as many pennys and go out of business. Other Opensource projects would not have anything to moan about anymore and stop programming, and go and get jobs as freelance gardeners. PC's would not advance as no software is available for them...... And we will still be using windows XP-OP (opensource) in the year 2050..........

Sorry...I was just a bit bored... and I know none of the above actualy makes any sense...

anyway look at Sourceforge.net, theres thousands of opensource projects there. Many are pretty damn good, and much can be learned.

Weedpacket

What I'd actually be interested in seeing consists of software houses opening up the source to some of their more obsolete products. Things like early (1.0) versions of VisiCalc, 1-2-3, Mathematica, and Word spring to mind.

Id Software has already done this in opening up the sources to games like Doom and Quake.

It would be interesting, because if you recall what PCs were like during the mid 1980s, the fact that they managed to pack what functionality they did into such small machines suggests there'd be some valuable lessons in optimisation going on in there.

But I guess one reason why houses might not do this could be because an embarrasing amount of obsolete code is still being used in the current version - even if it means writing an 8086 emulator into the software so that it can run the original 8086 assembler that no-one today can be bothered rewriting. Hey, processors today are fast enough that you can get away with having your program contain an entire virtual processor on which to run antique software ... even if the result is slower than a rewrite of the old code.

Alternatively, if Vapourware Ltd. were to open up the source to FooGraph v1.0 and someone else were to use the optimisations implemented therein in a similar product with features equivalent to those of FooGraph v9.8, the result may turn out to be embarrasingly faster and smaller and, well, just more resource-friendly than FooGraph v9.8.

the_Igel

I agree, the world of total open-source is impossible, as programmers want to be paid 🙂, but gaining access to obsolete code would be extremely cool. The same applies to on-line or partially on-line editions, that provide paid access to articles: giving free access to all the information that is, say, three years old would help a lot. There's no much money loss for them: one who would pay for subscription, should be really interested in area, consequently (s)he needs new information, and outdated articles should be mostly of use for casual visitor, that won't pay for it anyway.