Message in a Bottle

I think it’s hilarious when I watch a movie where a person writes a message stuffs it in a bottle and someone finds it and responds to their request (e.g. send help). The odds against the bottle making it anywhere meaningful, let alone someone finding it and figuring out how to act on the request is staggering.

I find that Open Source software is a lot like the message in a bottle, the movie version. Good open source software spreads quickly. Through the miracle of web server logs you can watch referring URLs in your web logs or trackbacks in your blog. I never fail to be awed at how viral this is. The web overcomes geography and makes everything just a click away.

For example, I have been watching visitors to our web site over the last few months. Despite being located in a small town outside of Baltimore, MD in the US we have huge numbers of visitors from all over the world including Russia, the Netherlands, and China. We don’t speak Chinese, Dutch, or Russian. We don’t run advertisements in Moscow or buy billboards in Beijing. Through word of mouth Zenoss is carried on the currents of the Internet. Here’s a little view of our web visitors and downloaders from the last month.