[extropy-chat] Re: SPACE: where are we?

[Rik van Riel]

On Sat, 7 Feb 2004, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:

> One has to wonder what open source development of the Mars Rover
> software might have been capable of?

While I am a very big open source proponent myself,
it will be worth realising that in this case it
probably wouldn't have helped much, if any.

For one, only NASA seems to have the hardware to
run these programs on, so there won't be many home
users reporting bugs and sending in patches...

Open source works best when you have multiple
participants.

Rik
-- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan