On 20 Jun 2006, at 6:16 pm, Kamen Nedev wrote:
Another topic which has been cropping up lately, and which you no doubt have thought about it (somewhere in the back of your brains, when not too busy hacking at this or that bundle) is the following: How can a resolutely closed-source application like TM attract such an open-source-like community environment? Does it have anything to do with software architecture (a closed framework with an open approach to extensibility through bundles), or with Allan's social skills?
No offence to Allan's social skills (although he is remarkably pleasant on this list for such a busy man), I think it's the bundles. In my own software development career, I've found that extensible- plugin-architecture applications exude this almost irresistible flexibility; you're not just looking at a fixed-purpose tool that will become the bane of your life if you want to do something that exceeds its "mental model" - you're looking at something that, by being able to extend it in a Turing-complete language, really is a modular component you can build into anything that would benefit from it.
It's a very different mindset.
ABS