Open source in film; Python history

While other sectors of the software world are well versed in the world of open source, the CFML community is still coming to terms to it. Confusion over the different types licenses and misunderstandings aside, the speed of uptake of an open source project can vary greatly, but in large it is a very slow and long burn.

Michael Ogawa, a student at UC Davis, has conducted a rather wonderful research project into the evolution of some of the major software projects. He has taken the history of each of project, and mapped it visually over a time line to observe how people and the project evolve. The Python history is shown here in this video below:

code_swarm - Python from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo.

As you can see the initial success of python can be largely attributed to one man, Guido van Rossum. His dedication allowed the python project to continue until it reached that crucial or tipping stage where the project's success was beyond the input of a single person.

OpenBD is fortunate in that it gets a kick start by from an established known product that is nearly 10 years old. But we can still learn a lot from this project and many others. The key to the success to many of the larger projects is to make it more than a single persons dream. Committees and Councils, while all formal sounding, is merely a structure to ensure no single person dominates an established project. Apache, Redhat, MySQL, Eclipse, OpenJDK, JCP, or any other large successful open project all hold to this group thinking mentality.

You will start seeing very soon the result of this collective thinking as we start to roll out some of our innovations and features as we move CFML into the wider software pool. Be sure to check out the OpenBD sessions at CFUnited this week for more details.