Principles of open source 2007 April 22
While surfing the Web, I came across an interesting blog post from Louise Kearney titled Open Source & the Common Good. If you know about Open Source or Free Software you probably won’t learn much from it as far as defining Open Source, but what caught my attention was Louise’s listing of what she considers the principles of open source: transparency, collaboration among peers, valuing the contribution of all, and innovation. She believes that these principals “are inspiring others to consider opening up knowledge, know how and design to create better knowledge, goods and services and make them available to more people for the common good.”
I guess what struck me about this is while I’ve thought, read, or heard about the principles of Free Software many times before, usually what gets talked about more is the Freedoms the software provides versus the principles of the internal community. I think this is something, for me, that is worth investigating, and reflecting on. With some of the highly publicised principles (at least publicized within the community), I sometimes wonder if many Open Source and Free Software developers always follow them, but I do think that the principles of transparency, collaboration, valuing the contribution of all, and innovation are, for the most part, are common in the Free Software and Open Source communities I am a part of.
Reading that post in Internet Explorer fills me with ironic glee.
See you at NJLA, Ed? I’ll try to catch your talk, even though you’ll be missing mine. I’ll probably post notes and/or slides on Technosophia if you’re interested.
Sorry I can’t make it to your presentation, but let me know when/where the notes and slides are posted.
Hi Edward,
I’m not sure how you came across my blog posting, but I’m glad it made you pause.
I wanted to let you know that, as a non-techie, I’ve been trying to learn more about Web 2.0 technologies and its applicability for the social sector. I’m then trying to let other non-techies consider how they might use the technology to collaborate and/or share and disseminate learning.
Anyway, the post on Open Source was written after I read a report by Martin Itzkow. Entitled “Empowering the Canadian Voluntary and Non-profit Sector”, the report, and the meeting it records, is getting a lot of profile among leaders in our sector. (Available at: http://www.cfc-fcc.ca/news_room/Social-Source-Technology-Movement.pdf)
More and more, folks are pointing to the Open Source movement as a model for the non-profit sector to adopt as they move forward. If we truly want to make a major impact on complex issues we need to work with principle, to help each other, to share knowledge, and to create a community of practitioners who think about and tweak methodologies in order to help those most vulnerable.
Cheers,
Louise