The open source projects are more than just a counter-attack against the monopole of the corporations. They are now mediums for communication, exchange of knowledge and creating links between people. The open-source initiative turned to be a social event that later served as a model for the expanding blog communities.
The roots of the open-source industry and philosophy can be traced back to the mid-70s. Originally, computers were used only in universities as research tools. The software for them was not proprietary and was freely passed around. Programmers were paid for their work, not for the programs they created.
In the mid-70s the company Micro-Soft (later renamed to Microsoft) was rapidly expanding its market positions. The profits of the corporation were supposed to come by selling copies of the software they created, and while this might seem logical, at the time that was not the norm. In 1976 Bill Gates wrote an open letter in which he criticized the practice of freely distributing software:
One thing you do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money in hobby software. […] [T]here is very little incentive to make this software available to hobbyists. Most directly, the thing you do is theft.
This letter became an important milestone for the development and expansion of proprietary software in the market. For the first time copying software without the publisher’s permission was presented as an unethical act and the concept of piracy was invented. In the following years, Micro-Soft’s monopolistic position gave Gates a chance to enforce this policy.
In 1997, Bruce Perens defined the ten principles of the open-source philosophy. The definition he created was invented to grant more rights to the customers, as opposed to the licenses that limit the freedoms. Richard Stallman, Founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, said:
ZNet, Free Software As A Social Movement
The basic idea of the Free Software Movement is that the user of software deserves certain freedoms. […] With these freedoms, users have full control of their own computers, and can use their computers to cooperate in a community.
In 1998 Microsoft executives dismissed open-source as hype. Complex future projects on such software will require big teams and big capital, says Ed Muth, a Microsoft group marketing manager. Nowadays, despite the skepticism and hostility, it is not possible to imagine the world without open-source products. From Linux with its various distributions, through the Apache server, allowing the hosting of thousands web sites on one computer, to the various blog platforms, the open-source club is growing and improving much faster than any corporation can.
A study by the MIT Sloan School of Management found that organizational reasons are the leading motivators for the majority of the employees in the corporate environment.
ZNet, Free Software As A Social Movement
Non-free software, by contrast [to the free software], keeps users divided and helpless. It is distributed in a social scheme designed to divide and subjugate. The developers of non-free software have power over their users, and they use this power to the detriment of users in various ways.
Indeed, the open-source projects (OSP) succeeded in creating informal communities gathered by a sense of duty towards each other, rather than by an obligation towards an institution. The MIT study also found out that the providers of information in the support forum of the open-source server Apache are motivated to give information by the sense of duty towards the other members of the community:
What are the similarities between the open-source projects and the blog communities?
The relation between bloggers and the blogs they write in is very similar to the relation between open-source information providers and the projects they support. The communication between the contributors in these cases provides both the information and the motivation.
Chimera Project, Blogging: personal participation in public knowledgebuilding on the web
[The] blogs are merely tools; they are not a golden ticket into the knowledge society. Knowledge is synthesized by communication between people sharing objectives. Blogs facilitate this by making people easier to find, and providing immediate and direct communication channels once contacts have been established.
The strong diversification between the information providers and the information seekers in the corporate world does not exist in the open-source/blog communication. Information seekers and providers often switch places in the open-source/blog communication. In this cases, knowledge is not a monopoly of one of the sides mainstream media or software corporation but it is a public property available for everybody.
*The entry was also posted on Euro Tribune.
