vaporware

Does transparency really have to start on day 1?

Open source folks often talk about transparency as a key part of the open source way. And if you ask most good open source folks when a project should start being open, they’ll say it should be open from the very beginning.

But what does that really mean?

Let’s look at the example of one of the most famous and successful open source projects (and one that is close to my heart), Linux.

Back in January, I wrote a post that broke down the first message Linus Torvalds ever sent out to the world about Linux into some of the key concepts that would become central to the open source way. Linus created a blueprint for the open source culture in the tone of his first email, long before the term “open source” was even coined.

Here again are the first few lines of his initial Linux post from August 25, 1991:

Continue reading →