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The Difference an Open Source Makes

O'Reilly Weblogs: Kevin Shockey -- Open Source makes a difference.  I subscribe to the Feed for the O'Reilly network and from time to time I go look at an article based on the short teasers that appear in the feeds.  Kevin Shockey's topic drew my attention, but I couldn't figure out what I was looking at.

Mostly, I can't figure out how to coordinate my browser (the famous disreputable one), my firewall, and however these pages are served up.  Even though I have an account and clicking "Sign In/My Account" simply confirms that I am already recognized, when I click to comment on a weblog entry, my browser goes into a URL fetch loop in the bowels of whatever O'Reilly does to provide single sign-one sans Passport. I finally caught enough of my firewall intercepts and authorized enough cookies, persistent cookies, 3rd party cookies (! and who is 1800-olympic.com anyhow?), and scripts and objects of all kinds that I feel my need to extend trust to the O'Reilly organization is severely strained.  But I can now get to the comment form.

So, apparently, paternalistic intrusion onto my computational premises has many forms.  The page also renders badly and that corruption denied me understanding of the George Bailey reference on the page.  Now I see it and I can correct my complaint in the comments I left.

With that kvetching behind me, I now return my attention to Kevin's theme. First, Kevin leads the SNAP Development Center, and that matters for the simple reason that he and his cohorts are pulling together a full-up open-source distribution of Java, incorporating the Jikes (IBM) compiler, the SableVM, and open source implementations of the standard API classes and such.

Sounds like worthy work to me.  I can think of a few reasons that I might want to use that, and at least do side-by-side verification of Java-based projects of my own with it.

There is more to Kevin's maiden soar onto the O'Reilly weblogs.  It's partly revealed in his author's biographical statement:

Kevin is an emerging high technology entrepreneur.  After spending 16 years in corporate software development and project management, he now leads an open source project funded with someone else's money.  When he's not reading, writing, or dreaming he likes to spend time enjoying his family.  His vision is to share his passion, mental agility, intuition, and challenge of authority to build an open future full of opportunity.

Enactment of the vision is illustrated by Kevin's choosing to work toward the development of a high-tech economy in Puerto Rico.  I can see how that fits an "open future full of opportunity" and also the housing of SNAP at the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico.

And yet I'm uncomfortable with automatic association of undertaking an open-source project with the fulfilment of some vision for making a difference.  I can see that it is that way for Kevin (but notice that the difference he sees is about much more than open-source development and I assume that other vehicles would be acceptable).  I don't see how open-source as an activity is inherently making a difference, granting that there are many paths to contribution and finding a purpose.  For me this is some kind of ideological collapse.

In a near-immediate exchange on the comments for his entry, Kevin spells out how he sees it.  I get that.  I can get how being a good parent makes a difference.  I can get how many small things make a difference every day.  I get that open-source development is a way to make a contribution, and that can make a difference.  There's an edge to it that goes too far for me.  I don't want to smother Kevin's inspiration in a blanket of non-possibility, so I'm going to stop this and think off-line about whatever I'm attached to that has me stumble so awkwardly on this expression of making a difference.

Listening to:

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Sheherazade, Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony, WMA version of CD in Windows Media Player 9.0.  And The Russian Easter Overture is next up, appropriately.

Reading:

Andrew Greeley, The Bishop Goes to The University, Tom Doherty Associates Forge Book (New York: 2003).  In my long separation from the writings of Father Greeley, his Father Blackie Ryan has become a Bishop.  Returning to his books found as supermarket book-rack plunder, I am struck by how much I now feel like an outsider at a running inside joke.  I'm a bit irked that the protagonist announces thoughts about key matters without telling us what those thoughts are until teasing us several more times across 100 pages or so.  [Oh my, am I doing something similar here?]  There is also an uncanny connection to the lovely Star Bright! and the fumbling efforts of a splintered religion in the contemporary world.

posted by orcmid at 12/12/2004 10:49:53 PM, rating data by NewsGator Online