Monthly Archive for August, 2006

The Ironic Birth of Waterfall

Did you know that the birth of the waterfall software development methodology is a thing of irony?  I was working on a presentation on agile software development when I looked deeper into the history of the waterfall methodology. Dr. Winston Royce first developed the waterfall methodology in 1970 in a paper entitled “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems“. In his paper he first introduces the waterfall approach and then states that it is ”...risky and invites failure“. Royce then proceeded to propose an iterative model as an improvement on his initial waterfall suggestions. Ironically, despite Royce’s own criticisms of a waterfall approach, the industry chose to adopt waterfall, and ignore his superior iterative methodology. You can read more details here.

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Proprietary Software is not Anti-Social

According to David Sugar (author of the GNU Bayonne telephony platform):

“Some choose to believe they have a right to develop software with the help of and knowledge found in the world at large, and yet deny that same right to others … As such, I personally see the question of proprietary software as anti-social …”
http://www.ddj.com/191800299

I could not disagree more. If proprietary software is anti-social then does that not make all other proprietary products anti-social? What makes a software product, borne of creativity, innovation, and intellect, different from other products derived from the same efforts?  Haven’t most products invented and constructed by mankind been borne of “knowledge found in the world at large”?

What’s your view?

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