Open Source Insights from Eric Raymond

06/17/03 00:00:00    

By Michael Mealling

Eric Raymond has an item on his blog on Hacking and Refactoring that's relevant to anyone who wants to apply open source principles to anything (including rocketry). The item is rather software-oriented but has lots of links to material that is must-read for understanding why open source works (and why so many attempts at applying open source approaches to other areas fail).

The central insight that's relevant to rocketry is that hacking starts with the first thing that works and then munges it into better and better shape until the final product bears little resemblance to the original. This is obviously very hard to do with physical objects (as opposed to software), but the essential mindset can be carried over to a certain extent. It's also important to bear in mind that many of the problems facing people designing and building hardware have to do with access to reliable information, and information is the essential substrate on which hackers work their craft.

This suggests that much of the open source methodology can be carried over directly to the information part of the hardware problem.