August 1st, 2006 | Filed under Open source
Stone Soup was one of my favorite childhood stories, which makes a lot of sense. In essence it’s a metaphor for open source software: everyone offering whatever ingredient they have on hand to add to the soup that everyone can enjoy. The keys to delicious soup (and a successful OS project), of course, are the stone (idea), the cauldron (forum), the village square (visibility), and the cook (leader). Update: Here’s Wikipedia’s take, which also makes the copyleft association.