Today I finished the book Abandon Ship!, by Richard F. Newcomb.  Originally written in 1958, the book tells about the loss of the U.S.S. Indianapolis in the last days of World War II.  The book was re-released this year with some new material and an Introduction and Afterward by Peter Maas (author of Serpico, among other titles).  The book doesn’t dwell too much on events in the water (apparently our society’s blood lust hadn’t yet matured in 1958) except to mention almost in passing the sharks, hunger, thirst, sun, and resulting insanity that claimed so many lives over the next four days.  The book does cover in detail the events leading up to the ship’s being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, and the resulting court martial of the ship’s Captain.  Even in 1946 most people considered the Captain’s court martial a miscarriage of justice.  In the light of previously secret documents that have been released since 1958, it’s plainly obvious that the Captain was hardly more than a scapegoat.

Of the approximately 1,200 men on the Indianapolis, it’s estimated that between 800 and 900 survived the initial attack and the ship’s sinking.  Of those, only about 300 survived four days in the water.  It’s a chilling story.  Can you imagine spending four days in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with no water, no food, no shelter, and a life jacket that has a 48-hour rating?  That any of the men not on rafts survived is a wonder.

I finally finished reading The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester.  The book’s cover describes it as “A tale of murder, insanity, and the making of the Oxford English Dictionary.”  It’s an interesting story about how an obviously insane American Army officer ended up being perhaps the greatest single contributor to the OED.

Reading the book, I was struck by how much the making of the OED reminds me of open source software projects–both the good and the bad.  First, the good.  The project would never have been completed without the thousands of volunteers who read books, identified words that should be included in the dictionary, and supplied quotations to illustrate how the words were used.  This information was sent to the editors, who verified the information, wrote the words’ definitions, and prepared the pages for typesetting.  The procedure reminded me much of open source projects that have dozens of  contributors (possibly more) who submit code that is integrated into the final product by the project’s “owners.”

Like many open source projects, the OED effort had some serious project management issues.  Originally conceived in the 1850s, the project went almost nowhere for the first 20 years.  People volunteered to help, but then decided it was too much work or would take too much time.  The original editor simply did not have the skills required to motivate and coordinate the work.  The new editor, James Murray (the “Professor” in the book), was able to get the project on track, but was woefully unable to estimate the time required to complete it.  In the end, although the final work was the product of thousands of paid and unpaid individuals, the bulk of the work was done by a select few–just like most open source projects.

No, the analogy isn’t perfect.  Whereas the contributors to an open source project have free and open access to the final product, the OED’s contributors were not entitled to a free copy of the completed dictionary.  Their motivation was very similar, though:  they saw a need for something they thought was important, and volunteered their time and effort to see it completed.