Peter

Open source means a lot more than free software, I knew that! After reading the article and seeing this video I know for sure now, it’s also about giving people freedom, which goes a long way. By having a product free to the public to play around with, somehow the sum of everyone’s knowledge would create something fantastic. That was the case with Linux. For me, Resolution OS was quite inspiring. I know more or less how Microsoft got lucky and came into being, but now seeing the success story of its greatest competitor really opened that door in my mind even wider.

Now here is where I come up with my own weird analogies. If you think about nature, the hundreds of possible conditions that somehow figured out how to create life and intelligence, it’s really a big miracle! How often does that happen? It’s a generic algorithm; a bunch of random happenings given enough time will eventually find a solution to something! Get a bunch of people, who represent individual brain cells, smash them together, and we might just create a brain (one with no borders)! That’s how I see Linux, Firefox and other open source projects anyway. Several little pieces came together, evaluated their fitness together, they kept all the good stuff, and magically we have a free yet powerful product to compete with the commercial industry.

It’s interesting to think then, why hasn’t the entire world just turn to open source development? That would not be possible if certain people originating from other companies came to see what they could benefit from. Few people want to work for free, but smart people know that the real value comes from knowledge. The world would certainly be consumed by the devil, Bill Gates, if we did not keep sharing ideas. Just when I thought it was cool enough to have Back To The Future come to threate the year I was born on, so also came the free software movement by Richard Stallman! (That was random.)

The great thing about all this is that you don’t have to be part of company backing you up, in order to contribute to open source development. Even end-users (who happen to be programmers) can throw in their suggestions and knowledge to make this product better. This first hand experience is what generates real motivation to have something done and if not, then its time to pass it to someone else who does have interest in it. I remember some people had bitter attitudes towards Microsoft when they “stole” the idea of tabbed browsing. The idea of tabbed-anything came originally from whoever invented filing cabinets! I don’t care too much about that, but this just go to show that open source development is the real university of programming! We can all be a part of that.