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 Mobile - Web - Media  Tuesday, Aug 02, 2005 11:15:53 AM
All I Need to Know About Open Source I 'probably' Learned in Kindergarten I've borrowed a commonly used title for this post, which goes like this: "All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" but with the twist of Open Source added in. I'm sure you can see where this is going, I don't even need to say the word and most of you are thinking it right now. It's something we attempt to drill into kids minds (at least many do). "Joey, please share your blocks with Alex. Maybe you two can build something together - wouldn't that be fun!" Those little 4-6yr old minds are always hearing about 'sharing,' 'waiting in line,' 'being polite,' or being given a means to explore the world and create. If we look at those concepts - we see a foundation for Open Source. - there's the sharing - the acknowledgement of others - the consideration of many over one - the support and encouragement of creating But then we somehow mutate into adults and most of us forget about 'the formula.' It worked great when we were kids - maybe we should give it a go as adults? But how can we all use this formula - we aren't all developers and we all aren't interested in moving to Linux. Open Source isn't even about software, code or computers. It's more of a framework you can apply to many systems. For example - people who like gardening with succulents are usually practicing "Open Source Gardening." A person with a succulent garden will often offer you some succulents, offer you advice on how to take care of them - and hope that you to will enjoy succulents as they do. If you look over the bullets above, you'll see that this was indeed an Open Source situation. Thinking about what you do - or where your skills are, is there anything you can Open Source? Is there anything you've already provided as Open Source? What is being Open Sourced to you? Before I close, I wanted to swing the attention here back to software and point out a parallel. Open Source software displaces commercial software just as the machine has displaced many jobs. It's a fractal relationship - showing a self-similarity pattern. That leaves people with two choices - they can either try to fight it and loose, or they can participate and take on the challenge of technological evolution. The arguements against Open Source are the equivelent to picketing factories that layoff workers due to new machines. On a social level - it's always very sad to hear about layoffs - but on a larger scale, it's just nature pushing for us to keep pushing. With that said, you could almost consider Open Source as nature's way of dealing with evil corporations that actually slow down progress. It's as if nature said, "Look - I gave you guys the keys and figured you'd work it out - but... look at this mess - your operating systems are horrible - and look at that word processor, it's mutated into a chubby monster!" I think Open Source provides opportunities for higher levels of progress in the evolution of what it's being applied to - and the reason is all very simple - because under the hood, Open Source is Kindergarten. 
open source
comments 1
I really like this approach to Open Source. It's an approach I so far have not seen, but that makes a lot of sense. So, yeah, good point you're making. I'm not sure if Open Source is unstoppable, but yeah, it's strong and getting stronger by the minute. Even big corporations and governments are starting to see the benefit of Open Source. Of course, as with everything, there's downsides to Open Source, but those downsides (imho) don't weigh up against the many plusses. |
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