Open Source Software
In 2000, Wheeler self-published "Why Open Source Software / Free Software? Look at the Numbers!", a text where he argued that considering FLOSS is justified. This article has been cited in over 80 scholarly works and in the 2004 report of the California Performance Review. Wheeler was interviewed about his webpage by Linux.com.
In 2001, Wheeler published a webpage where he measured the source lines of code of the Red Hat Linux distribution version 7.1. By applying conventional cost-estimating techniques, he concluded that it would cost more than a billion US Dollars to develop this distribution by conventional proprietary means. This work has inspired one person to measure other FLOSS systems, the Debian distribution.
In 2006, Wheeler posted "Nearly all FLOSS is Commercial" on his webpage. This is a critical issue in U.S. federal government acquisitions, because the U.S. government has laws and policies that prefer the acquisition of commercial items. He argues that FLOSS is defined as commercial software by the government's own rules, and believes that no one else had clearly articulated that before him.
Read more about this topic: David A. Wheeler
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