What's interesting is that this is how the internet was when it first started. Groups of knowledgeable people getting together and doing work for free that benefited everyone. It made the internet special. The fact that these types of collaborations are dying out is sad but to be expected when corporations, governments, and basically anyone with an interest in money get involved with something new and cool.
I'd like to think that the hacker/hobbyist is still out there, coming up with and implementing new and interesting ideas.
In some small cases, groups have banded together for reasons, both idealogical (Linux, Python, Perl) as well as for profit (Mozilla). Projects will get purchased (Snort, MySQL, BeOpen Python), code will fork (Suricata, MariaDB, Python), and progress will be made. OpenSSL is one of those tiny, super critical projects that made it to the limelight this time around. There may be forks (OpenSSL-ng, LibreSSL). They may share, merge, and continue to move forward. It's human progress.
I'm happy and proud to see how the entire OSS movement has grown and helped change the world around us. Things will change, yeah, but in the end there's always That Guy who keeps championing it and changing the world, one line of code at a time.
What's interesting is that this is how the internet was when it first started. Groups of knowledgeable people getting together and doing work for free that benefited everyone. It made the internet special. The fact that these types of collaborations are dying out is sad but to be expected when corporations, governments, and basically anyone with an interest in money get involved with something new and cool.
I'd like to think that the hacker/hobbyist is still out there, coming up with and implementing new and interesting ideas.
In some small cases, groups have banded together for reasons, both idealogical (Linux, Python, Perl) as well as for profit (Mozilla). Projects will get purchased (Snort, MySQL, BeOpen Python), code will fork (Suricata, MariaDB, Python), and progress will be made. OpenSSL is one of those tiny, super critical projects that made it to the limelight this time around. There may be forks (OpenSSL-ng, LibreSSL). They may share, merge, and continue to move forward. It's human progress.
I'm happy and proud to see how the entire OSS movement has grown and helped change the world around us. Things will change, yeah, but in the end there's always That Guy who keeps championing it and changing the world, one line of code at a time.