This is a literature review of What Is Open Source by Steve Weber.

It tells a brief history of open source software, how it started and how it has developed. It talks about how important it is to the creation of things that everyone who experiences a thing should have an unburdened means of improving that thing because everyone has the potential to see a different problem or have better solutions.

The Good: It is a very detailed reading while also being written in a way anyone should be able to understand. It puts a programmer’s perspective into view for those who don’t usually see things that same way. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that so accurately put into words how programmers behave and see differently from an average person. I also quite like how it

The Bad: It is a very long read, covering many subjects in lengths that I didn’t feel was necessary.

Questions: -Is there any project that shouldn’t be open-source? -Is there any way to make projects be both open-source and for a profit or is that oxymoronic? Even though the reading says that the source should be unobstructed, do all projects need to be completely unobstructed to benefit from the open-source mentality? -Could the open-source community be considered ‘too trusting’? In my experience, bugs and errors aren’t always obvious and the cause can be even less so coming from sections of code seemingly unrelated. Without strict rules, how often do those problems sneak in?