Digithoughts

Building software is hard. Only an elite few organizations can genuinely qualify as proficient in creating software. Most groups struggle and plod along. Google the Standish Group's yearly CHAOS report to see just how common mediocre and expensive IT projects are.  If you aren't already familiar with the CHAOS report or a seasoned IT vet, you'll be stunned. As of 2009, 44% of projects are "challenged" -- meaning they are some combination of over budget, late or feature incomplete. Twenty-four percent get cancelled altogether.  Sixty-eight percent of software projects are not successfully deployed. Worse still, only a subset of the projects successfully deployed will deliver or exceed the anticipated results!

Software is expensive, extremely risky and - no matter your industry -- no longer an optional part of business.

Still, even with these challenges, the world of software is extremely bright. Why? Because software development isn't silo'd.

My business card has a quote from Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants."  I love that quote. But I believe a totem pole is perhaps a better metaphor for software. Here there are no giants. It only seems that way. Every man who climbs to the top of the totem pole sees further. When you look down from the top of the totem pole, the many people at the bottom appear smaller and smaller, while those just below you look huge in comparison.

These software totems are powerful. In 2011, a single freelancer can deliver technology for rent money that companies like IBM, Microsoft or Oracle couldn't have accomplished with their massive resources 10 years ago.

Our world has thousands of totems and tens of thousands of people climbing on top of those totems. Every. Single. Day. Without stopping. Some totems become towers. What a dichotomy! Failed projects costing millions or tens of millions of dollars are commonplace while trivial projects of today are huge endeavors of the past!

We've adopted a few of these towering totems. In fact our entire software stack is composed of towering totems.

Software development is hard. It's also fundamentally collaborative and sharing in nature. This is why building free, open source software is the only way that makes sense.

Dustin Currie Senior Engineer

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