OSS (Open Source Software) is now a commonplace, but its origins can be traced back to fetchmail, emacs, and Linux.

I think the first argument (or rather, column) that presented OSS as "not just a bona fide source code disclosure, but a good software development model" was Eric Daymond's disclosure, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".

I re-read this today and did not find any reference to the OSS business model here.

However, various business models have now been realized and are already well established.

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Well, to see how badly OSS was treated in the beginning, please refer to this article.

'Nowadays, even people who are not familiar with IT know the term, OSS (Open Source Software) -- when this concept was announced to the world, IT engineers around the world (myself included) gasped and said, "Isn't that stupid?'

'The source code of a program is the culmination of software technology. If you make that source code open for anyone to see, it is like giving your work all the way to someone else.

Others include,

At that time, when I was compiling the Linux kernel, my boss said to me, "Ebata! Don't play with a toy OS! I was scolded by him.

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And lately, I think...

"Even if the source code is disclosed, I can't read the code written by others after all"

I would like to argue that a theory of "Open Source is nearly equal to Closed Source".

I know well, that,

"The cost of understanding open source code is comparable to the cost of rebuilding open source code from scratch"

It was late this morning that I was able to understand this from the opposite direction this time, by the fact of

'I couldn't understand a hundred lines of someone else's code, but I could instantly recall a thousand lines of my own code that I wrote five years ago.'

In other words, 'open source code maximizes its value when it is paired with its developers.

As a matter of fact, if I am using someone else's open source and a bug arises, I have no desire to debug that code at all.

In such cases, my response is about three things: (1) deal with the problem in operation, (2) abandon the use of the code, or (3) hope the bug does not come up in a workshop at a conference.

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Of course, this my experience does not negate a single millimeter of the OSS development and business models that have been discussed.

But for me, my OSS is about

"Collaborative development between me in the past and me in the present"

is the most significant.

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Professor Leskenen's line from Steins;Gate Zero episode 18,

"This is a timeless collaboration between me and me"

should be added to the significance of OSS development.