Reading 10: King of the Ball

Successful people make their own luck in the world, but, honestly, I’m not so sure how to feel about this statement. I want to believe that success happens to individuals who work extremely hard and give whatever they are working on their all, but that hasn’t always proven true. Success is relative, but if we are equating success with “making it big,” then luck must absolutely factor into the equation. Success, in this sense, cannot exist without some sort of series of fortunate circumstances. With all that being said, Linux’s success is proof of the power of hackers in the bazaar, but its success is also due to a matter of circumstance. Linus acknowledges that Linux’s success was due, in part, to his “pragmatic approach and [his] ability to keep from taking sides in disputes” (196). But, Linus also mentions that “[y]ou have to be good, sure, but everything has to turn out the right way, too” (202). The circumstances surrounding Linux were favorable, which contributed to the operating system’s success.

It seems that now, more than ever, there is a push for companies to go the open source route. (Or maybe I just think there is a push for open source because we’ve talked so much about open source software in the majority of my computer science classes this year? I don’t really know.) There are a lot of hidden gems waiting to be discovered in the open source community, so who knows? Maybe one of those hidden gens will turn out to be the next Linux. With more and more individuals entering the world of computer science and discovering programming, I can only imagine that one day, we will have another open source success story comparable to Linux’s. Or perhaps, multiple open source success stories. It would be pretty awesome to witness the next big open source success story in my lifetime. We’ll just have to wait and see.