Made in Cosmos

Open Source Software is like an oatmeal. Instead of reinventing the whole thing from scratch each time, you can build on other people’s recipes, modify them to your taste, or even combine different recipes together, and then let everyone know what you came up with. You won’t lose anything by sharing the recipe you used. Quite the contrary, everybody wins in result.

Every issue of Kosmos dla Dziewczynek, the magazine for grade-school girls I cooperate with, is aligned around a single main theme. This month the main topic was “Wealth”, and I just had no choice but to write about open source in my regular column on science & tech. A few decades ago, creating more wealth by sharing your know-how openly with the world would sound like madness and/or science fiction. Yet companies like mine are a proof that this is possible.

This might be my favorite article I wrote for Kosmos so far. And trust me, between Margaret Hamilton programming the Apollo mission, Grace Hopper chasing bugs in her mainframe computer, and SETI program in Arecibo, I have a lot of favorites to choose from.