AutoCatalytic Software

Software development can be viewed as the production and processing of text files. From operating systems to compilers to web pages almost all of software development either begins or ends with text files. The source code for the compiler is a text file. The HTML of the web page you are currently viewing is a text file. The CGI script that served it up is a text file. If you view OSS from the persepective of the text-files that make it up then OSS is about text files that can act on other text files. For example, the source code for a compiler is compiled into a new version of the compiler which then is used to compile Perl which is then used to process CGI scripts for an Apache web server to serve up custom HTML pages that interface to the CVS server for the source code for the complier.