Podcast Update: Robert Lefkowitz and Semasiology, Again

Robert presented the second part of his presentation on the semasiology of open source. I thoroughly enjoyed the first part and this one did not let me down either. He does a good job of making some straight forward facts and observations painfully obvious and, more importantly, convincingly important. For example, he builds the case that at least 1/2 of the money spent on software is spent reading it. Thus, make it readable is far more important that we may generally think. Why is this true? Well 60+% of the expense for any software is consumed in maintenance. Most of the time spent in maintenance is spent reading the code trying to figure out what it does.

He also reminds us that the meaning of "reading" has changed over time and that the nature of this change has relevance for open source in the modern world. For example, in the early days of reading, the reader was seen as taking on the properties of the writer. Anyone reading a book as taking the role of the speaker (writer). Overtime, the reader was seen as the receiver of the exchange. The reader essentially became the target, the listener for the writer. Open Source in this same way will and does encompass more then just the source. It is also about requirements and all of the other characteristics accompany our conception of software. Very interesting presentation.