I attended the Massachusetts Software Council’s Open Source Special Interest Group “kickoff” meeting today. I went for 2 reasons, 1) I am developing a training system using open source software and 2) Dan Bricklin, the developer of VisiCalc for the Apple series of micro computers was a primary sponsor and panel member and I had never met him. If you do not know the history of the micro computer world, I offer you this VisiCalc to Basketball analogy. Dan Bricklin scored 70 points and made the gaming winning basket from half court, while being tripled teamed, to win both the NCAA and the NBA championships. It was a very interesting event and there were quite a few high powered executives and developers in the audience and on the panels. For more information on the event, you can go here

http://oss-sig.softwaregarden.com/blogs/oss-sig/

This group was knowledgeable, experienced and successful. Questions and responses were lively and engaging, well, except once.

Someone asked in effect

” Who is looking after the security of our software infrastructure. What is being done to help us manage the trust-ability of our software.”

The question was not answered or commented upon.