I’ve often wondered why Moore’s Law for Software does not exist – the evolution of software has failed at keeping pace with the vast changes in hardware.

Could Open Source Software be the panacea for this dilemma?

Truly, even though OSS has been around for years (having participated in it myself in the late 80′s, early 90′s), it’s been only recently that it has been gaining traction.

Are applications the end-result for OSS? As the pool of OS applications have matured and have gained the attention of executives all over, certainly it’s cool, cost-effective and productive to bring OS applications in house.

But the same facts that make these applications serious alternatives at a business level seem to have a deeper meaning.

Software is getting better. And it is getting better faster.

Worldwide collaboration on software projects has necessitated better processes to produce applications that can compete with commercial offerings. And exposing the applications’ strengths and weakness in the form of releasing code to the developer community has served as a proven educational tool.

Through sharing of code and intellectual property, students of OSS now have access to a wealth of resources, and as contributions grow, revolutionary ideas will unfold.

The developers seem to be getting younger. And the code and processes more mature. And the surface area is growing exponentially. I believe we are about to see fundamental improvements in the kinds and quality of software – improvements that are no longer linear.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at 10:24 am and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.