I felt badly after posting the last blog entry. It sounded like I was demeaning Mitch Kapor and the programmers that built Chandler, even comparing myself to them.
Not true. There's something else going on here, and I want to write about it. It's about the Open Source community, and the amazing gifts they have given us. Open Source is going to be the recurring subject of this blog.
I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, and it's a remarkable story.
Until 1953, no one had ever climbed Mount Everest. That year, as every school child knows, a New Zealander named Edmund Hillary and a sherpa named Tenzing Norgay become the first climbers to reach the top.
It was an unimaginable feat. To achieve it, they had to invent their own path into uncharted territory, risking their lives to extend the range of what was possible.
They weren't alone, there were over 400 porters and sherpas supporting the expedition. But still it was amazing. Hillary was knighted, and was named one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
Well, in the software world that's Mitch Kapor. His signature products - among them Lotus 123 and Lotus Agenda - changed the computer industry.
123 was a better version of Visicalc - maybe other topnotch programmers could have done it.
Lotus Agenda was something else entirely - a new paradigm, a work of genius that showed us new, uncharted territories of possibility. 20 years later, no one has matched this jewel.
Eventually, climbing Mount Everest became routine. Hundreds of people reach the summit each year - including the blind, the old (76 years old), and the young (15 years old).
In 2007, China paved a road to the Tibet base camp, you can pack a lunch and drive there. Your cell phone will work the whole way, no worries about missing an important tweet about your favorite celebrity.
Back to Everest. Imagine a few years from now, a tourist is able to take a chairlift right to the Hillary Step. The chairlift was built by volunteers, and the ride is free. At the top, other volunteers will help fill oxygen bottles. And, of course, volunteers are standing by with advice and encouragement to help climb the last few feet.
Among those volunteers, there's Mitch Kapor again (and thousands of people like him). He's really committed, he popped $5 Million into the Open Source Applications Foundation.
I haven't read the 'Two Dozen Programmers...' book yet (I've barely dipped into the blogs from those years), but the project wasn't about building Lotus Agenda again. It was about building the Open Source community.
And that tourist is me. I'm going to 'climb Mount Everest', supported by the tens of thousands of programmers that contribute to the Open Source community, many of whom are standing by to answer questions. Almost all of them are better than I will ever be.
I'm using an alphabet soup of Open Source tools that they have built for me - all amazing, and all free. PHP, MySQL, Linux, Apache, Joomla!, and many more.
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Hmmm. And that programmer who tried building Beeswax in 2008? He was using the same kind of ancient equipment that Hillary might have used (a C compiler, I didn't know they were still being used).
The original Lotus Agenda was certainly built by sizeable team. But Beeswax tried to climb the mountain by himself, he didn't have the sherpas and porters. And although he may have had the 'map' from the original project, he doesn't appear to have read it.
Can't imagine what he was thinking.
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