Open source

Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's sources. Some consider it as a philosophy, and others consider it as a pragmatic methodology. Before open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; the term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Internet and its enabling of diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.The complexity of such communication relates to Brooks' law, and it is also described by Eric S. Raymond, "Brooks predicts that as your number of programmers N rises, work performed scales as N but complexity and vulnerability to bugs rises as N-squared. N-squared tracks the number of communications paths (and potential code interfaces) between developers' code bases." -- "The Revenge of the Hackers". 2000. Subsequently, open source software became the most prominent face of open source.

The open source model can allow for the concurrent use of different agendas and approaches in production, in contrast with more centralized models of development such as those typically used in commercial software companies.Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. ed 3.0. 2000.

History

Those involved with journalism and open source intelligence used the earliest known practices of open source that focused on accessibility rather than modification of sources. Software developers used to commonly release their code under public domain until they wanted to control how such freely accessible sources are modified and distributed. Developers, like the Free Software Foundation, began to license their work, but they still kept it as free software.

The "open source" label came out of a strategy sessionHistory of the OSI. Open Source Initiative. 2006. held at Palo Alto in reaction to Netscape's January 1998 announcement of a source code release for Navigator. The group of individuals at the session included Christine Peterson who suggested "open source" and also included Todd Anderson, Larry Augustin, John Hall, Sam Ockman, and Eric S. Raymond. They used the opportunity before the release of Navigator's source code to clarify a potential confusion caused by the ambiguity of the word free in English, so that the perception of free software is not anti-commercial. Netscape listened and released their code as open source under the name of Mozilla.

The term was given a big boost at an event organized in April 1998 by technology publisher Tim O'Reilly. Originally titled the "Freeware Summit" and later known as the "Open Source Summit"Open Source Summit Linux Gazette. 1998., the event brought together the leaders of many of the most important free and open source projects, including Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall, Brian Behlendorf, Eric Allman, Guido van Rossum, Michael Tiemann, Paul Vixie, Jamie Zawinski of Netscape, and Eric Raymond. At that meeting, the confusion caused by the name "free software" was brought up. Tiemann argued for "sourceware" as a new term, while Raymond argued for "open source." The assembled developers took a vote, and the winner was announced at a press conference that evening.

This milestone may be commonly seen as the birth of the open source movement. However, earlier researchers with access to the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) used a process called Request for Comments, which is similar to open standards, to develop telecommunication network protocols. Characterized by contemporary open source work, this collaborative process led to the birth of the Internet in 1969.

The Open Source Initiative formed in February 1998 by Eric S. Raymond and Bruce Perens. With at about 20 years of evidence from case histories of closed development versus open development already provided by the Internet, the OSI continued to present the 'open source' case to commercial businesses. They sought to bring a higher profile to the practical benefits of freely available source code, and they wanted to bring major software businesses and other high-tech industries into open source. Bruce Perens adapted Debian's Free Software Guidelines to make the Open Source Definition. Perens, Bruce. Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution. O'Reilly Media. 1999.

Critics have said that the term "open source" fosters an ambiguity of a different kind such that it confuses the mere availability of the source with the freedom to use, modify, and redistribute it. Developers have used the term Free/Open-Source Software (FOSS), or Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS), consequently, to describe open-source software that is freely available and free of charge.

Markets

Software is not the only field affected by open source; many fields of study and social and political views have been affected by the growth of the concept of open source. Advocates in one field will often support the expansion of open source in other fields, including Linus Torvalds who is quoted as saying, "the future is open source everything."

The open source movement has been the inspiration for increased transparency and liberty in other fields, including the release of biotechnology research by CAMBIA, Wikipedia, and other projects. The open-source concept has also been applied to media other than computer programs, e.g., by Creative Commons. It also constitutes an example of user innovation (see for example the book Democratizing Innovation). Often, open source is an expression where it simply means that a system is available to all who wish to work on it.

Agriculture

Beverages
- OpenCola — An idea inspired by the open source movement. Soft drink giants like Coke and Pepsi hold their formulas as closely guarded secrets. Now volunteers have posted the recipe for a similar cola drink on the Internet. The taste is said to be comparable to that of the standard beverages.
- Beer — A beer recipe called Vores Øl. Following its release, an article in Wired magazine commented that "as open source spreads beyond software to online encyclopedias like Wikipedia and biological research, it was only a matter of time before somebody created an open-source beer".Cohn, David. "Free Beer for Geeks". Wired News. 18 July 2005. The beer was created by students at the IT-University in Copenhagen together with Superflex, a Copenhagen-based artist collective, to illustrate how open source concepts might be applied outside the digital world. The likewise concept expands upon a statement found in the Free Software Definition: "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech' not as in 'free beer.'"Stallman, Richard M. The Free Software Definition. Free Software Foundation. 2005.

Content

Open-content projects organized by the Wikimedia Foundation — Sites such as Wikipedia and Wiktionary have embraced the open-content GFDL and Creative Commons content licenses. These licenses were designed to adhere to principles similar to various open-source software development licenses. Many of these licenses ensure that content remains free for re-use, that source documents are made readily available to interested parties, and that changes to content are accepted easily back into the system. Some have noted that the Wikipedia editorial process is similar to the bazaar-style development process described in Eric Raymond's essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Another site embracing open source-like ideals is Project Gutenberg: it posts many books on which the copyright has expired and are thus in the Public Domain which ensures that anyone can use that content for any purpose whatsoever.

There are few examples of business information (methodologies, advice, guidance, practices) using the open source model, although this is another case where the potential is enormous. ITIL is close to open source. It uses the Cathedral model (no mechanism exists for user contribution) and the content must be bought for a fee that is small by business consulting standards (hundreds of British pounds). Various checklists are published by government, banks or accounting firms. Possibly the only example of free, bazaar-model open source business information is Core Practice.

Yellowikis is a very successful example company listings. Anyone can access or add to it for free. Unfortunately it is so successful that it has attracted a legal challenge.

Health

Medicine
Pharmaceuticals — There have been several proposals for open-source pharmaceutical development, such as the article Finding Cures for Tropical Diseases: Is Open Source an Answer?, which led to the establishment of the Tropical Disease Initiative. There are also a number of not-for-profit "virtual pharmas" such as the Institute for One World Health and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative.

Technology

Computer software
- Open source software — software whose source code is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees. Open source code evolves through community cooperation. These communities are composed of individual programmers as well as very large companies. Some examples of open source initiatives are Linux, Eclipse, Apache, Tomcat web server, Moodle, Mozilla, Mediawiki (the software that runs Wikipedia), and various other projects hosted on SourceForge and elsewhere.

Computer hardware
- Open source hardware — hardware whose initial specification, usually in a software format, are published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the hardware and source code without paying royalties or fees. Open source hardware evolves through community cooperation. These communities are composed of individual hardware/software developers, hobbyists, as well as very large companies. An example of Open Source Hardware initiatives are: Sun Microsystem's OpenSPARC T1 Multicore processor. Sun states in their Press release: "The source code will be released under an Open Source Initiative (OSI)-approved open source license."

Open design — which involves applying open source methodologies to the design of artifacts and systems in the physical world. Very nascent but has huge potential.

Teaching - which involves applying the concepts of open source to instruction using a shared web space as a platform to improve upon learning, organizational, and management challenges. An example of an Open Source Courseware is the Java Education & Development Initiative (JEDI).

Society and culture

Open source as applied to culture defines a culture in which fixations are made generally available. Participants in such an open source culture are able to modify those products, if needed, and redistribute them back into the community or other organizations.

Government

Open source government — primarily refers to use of open source software and technologies in traditional government organizations and government operations such as voting.
Open source politics — is a term used to describe a political process that uses Internet technologies such as blogs and email to provide for a rapid feedback mechanism between political organizations and their supporters. There is also an alternative conception of the term which relates to the development of public policy under a set of rules and processes similar to the Open Source Software movement.
Open source governance — is similar to open source politics, but it applies more to the democratic process and promotes the freedom of information.

Media

Open source journalism — referred to the standard journalistic techniques of news gathering and fact checking, and reflected a similar term that was in use from 1992 in military intelligence circles, open source intelligence. It is now commonly used to describe forms of innovative publishing of online journalism, rather than the sourcing of news stories by a professional journalist.

OpenDocument — An open document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents such as text documents (including memos, reports, and books), spreadsheets, charts, and presentations. Organizations and individuals that store their data in an open format such as OpenDocument avoid being locked in to a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their current vendor goes out of business, raises their prices, changes their software, or changes their licensing terms to something less favorable.

Creative Commons — A non-profit organization devoted to expand the range of creative work available for others legally to build upon and share.

Open source movie production - Either an open call system in which a changing crew and cast collaborate in movie production, a system in which the end result is made available for re-use by others or in which exclusively open source products are used in the production. The 2006 movie Elephant's Dream is said to be the "world's first open movie"http://www.elephantsdream.org/, created entirely using open source technology.

Open source documentary - A documentary film whose production process involves the open contributions of archival material, footage, and other filmic elements, both in unedited and edited form. By doing so, on-line contributors become part of the process of creating the film, helping to influence the editorial and visual material to be used in the documentary, as well as its thematic development. The first open source documentary, "The American Revolution" is currently in production.

Open Source Filmmaking - Open Source Filmmaking refers to a form of filmmaking that takes a method of idea formation from open source software, but in this case the 'source' for a film maker is raw unedited footage rather than programming code. It can also refer to a method of filmmaking where the process of creation is 'open' i.e. a disparate group of contributers, at different times contribute to the final piece.

Innovation Communities

Open Source concepts and structures can be used to organize communities. At Bootstrap Austin, an open source community, entrepreneurs provide negotiated products/services at no cost to the group. The entrepreneur benefits by gaining reputation in the community, experience and an improved product. The community is at once a customer and Evangelist for the product/service. The entrepreneur monetizes their product or service outside the Bootstrap community.

Arts & Recreation

Open Source Yoga Unity — A nonprofit California corporation, was formed to provide a common voice, and the pooling of resources, to resist the enforcement of the copyright protection of any Yoga style thereby ensuring its continued natural unfettered practice for all to enjoy and develop.

Notes

External links

Sourceforge Open Source software development web site, hosting more than 100,000 projects.
Koders.com A search engine that finds Open Source software.
Krugle.com Another search engine that finds Open Source software.
Open Source Scripts Open Source software directory web site.
The Open Source Initiative
Realizing the Promise of Open Source in the Nonprofit Sector Jonathan Peizer, 2003
Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution ebook with articles of major players including Richard Stallman, Larry Wall, and Marshall Kirk McKusick. O'Reilly, 1st Edition January 1999 ISBN 1-56592-582-3,
The Cathedral and the Bazaar Eric Raymond's notorious essays about Open Source, ISBN 0-596-00131-2,
Wide open: Open source methods and their future potential by Geoff Mulgan, Omar Salem, Tom Steinberg (pdf file) ISBN 1841801429
Open Source Software Development as a Special Type of Academic Research Nikolai Bezroukov's page that links open source and academic research
The Great Software Debate: Technology and Ideology Jonathan Peizer, 2003
The Rise of Open Source Licensing: A Challenge to the Use of Intellectual Property in the Software Industry, by Mikko Välimäki, 2005 (pdf file) ISBN 952-91-8769-6 (printed), 952-91-8779-3 (PDF)
Benkler, Yochai, “Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm. Yale Law Journal 112.3 (Dec 2002): p367(78) (in Adobe pdf format)
The developerWorks Open Source Zone
An open-source shot in the arm? The Economist, Jun 10th 2004,
Open Source Wiki A wiki dedicated to Open Source
Bob Sutor: Open Standards vs. Open Source: How to think about software, standards, and Service Oriented Architecture at the beginning of the 21st century
Bob Sutor: Adjusting to a more open world: Understanding and overcoming resistance to open technologies

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