Open Source Projects
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.[1] 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.[2] "Open source" as applied to culture defines a
culture in which fixations are made generally available. Participants in
such a culture are able to modify those products and redistribute them
back into the community.
Open Source Information
History
The "open source" label came out of a strategy session[3] 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, Jon
Hall, Sam Ockman, and Eric S. Raymond. They used the opportunity before the
release of Navigator's source code to free themselves of the ideological and
confrontational connotations of the term free software. 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"[4], 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 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. [5]
Critics have said that the term "open source" fosters an ambiguity of a
different kind, in 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."
Eric Raymond and other founders of the open source movement have sometimes
publicly tried to put the brakes on speculation about applications outside of
software, arguing that strong arguments for software openness should not be
weakened by overreaching into areas where the story is less compelling. The
broader impacts of the open source movement, and the extent of its role in the
development of new information sharing procedures, remains to be seen.
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.
Most economists would agree that open source candidates have a public goods
aspect to them. In general, this suggests that the original work involves a
great deal of time, money, and effort. However, the cost of reproducing the work
is very low so that additional users may be added at zero or near zero cost -
this is referred to as the marginal cost of a product. At this point, it is
necessary to consider a copyright. The idea of copyright for works of authorship
is to protect the incentive of making these original works. Copyright
restriction then creates access costs on consumers who value the original more
than making an additional copy but value the original less than its price. Thus,
they will pay an access cost of this difference. Access costs also pose problems
for authors who wish to create something based on another work yet are not
willing to pay the copyright holder for the rights to the copyrighted work. The
second type of cost incurred with a copyright system is the cost of
administration and enforcement of the copyright.
The idea of open source is then to eliminate the access costs of the consumer
and the creator by reducing the restrictions of copyright. This will lead to
creation of additional works, which build upon previous work and add to greater
social benefit. Additionally, some proponents argue that open source also
relieves society of the administration and enforcement costs of copyright.
Organizations such as Creative Commons have websites where individuals can file
for alternative "licenses", or levels of restriction, for their works. These
self-made protections free the general society of the costs of policing
copyright infringement. Thus, on several fronts, there is an efficiency argument
to be made on behalf of open sourced goods.
Others argue that society loses through open sourced goods. Because there is a
loss in monetary incentive to the creation of new goods, some argue that new
products will not be created. This argument seems to apply particularly to the
business model where extensive research and development is done, e.g.
pharmaceuticals. However, others argue that visual art and other works of
authorship should be free. These proponents of extensive open source ideals
argue that there should be no monetary incentive for artists.
Agriculture
* Beverages
o 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.
o 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".[6] 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 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.'"[7]
o But before that In 2002 a beer company in Australia, Brewtopia, started an
open source brewery which invited the general population to be involved in the
development and ownership of the brewery, but asking them to vote on the
development of every aspect of their beer, Blowfly, and its road to market. In
return for their feedback and input, they received shares in the company, which
is now publicly traded on one of the Stock Exchanges in Australia. The company
has always adhered to its Open Source roots and is the only beer company in the
world that allows the public to design, customise and develop their own beers
online.
o Coffee - It has been pointed out that capsule-based beverage systems such as
Nestle's Nespresso or Krups' Tassimo turn home-brewed coffee from an inherently
"open-source" beverage into a product limited by the specific range of capsules
made available by the system manufacturers.
* 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 and Science
* Medicine
o 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.
* Science
o Research — The Science Commons was created as an alternative to the expensive
legal costs of sharing and reusing scientific works in journals etc.
* Computer software
o 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. Examples of open-source software products are:
+ Linux - operating system based on Unix
+ Eclipse - software framework for "rich-client applications"
+ Apache - HTTP web server
+ Tomcat web server - web container
+ Moodle - course management system
+ Mozilla Firefox - web browser
+ Mozilla Thunderbird - e-mail client
+ OpenOffice.org — office suite
+ Mediawiki — wiki server software, the software that runs Wikipedia
+ Joomla! — content management system
* Computer hardware
o 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. Examples 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."
+ Arduino, a microcontroller platform for hobbyists, artists and designers.
* 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
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, email and polling 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.
Weblogs, or blogs, are another significant platform for open source culture.
Blogs consist of periodic, reverse chronologically ordered posts, using a
technology that makes webpages easily updatable with no understanding of design,
code, or file transfer required. While corporations, political campaigns and
other formal institutions have begun using these tools to distribute
information, many blogs are used by individuals for personal expression,
political organizing, and socializing. Some, such as LiveJournal, utilize open
source software that is open to the public and can be modified by users to fit
their own tastes. Whether the code is open or not, this format represents a
nimble tool for people to borrow and re-present culture; whereas traditional
websites made the illegal reproduction of culture difficult to regulate, the
mutability of blogs makes "open sourcing" even more uncontrollable since it
allows a larger portion of the population to replicate material more quickly in
the public sphere.
Messageboards are another platform for open source culture. Messageboards (also
known as discussion boards or forums), are places online where people with
similar interests can congregate and post messages for the community to read and
respond to. Messageboards sometimes have moderators who enforce community
standards of etiquette such as banning users who are spammers. Other common
board features are private messages (where users can send messages to one
another) as well as chat (a way to have a real time conversation online) and
image uploading. Some messageboards use phpBB, which is a free open source
package. Where blogs are more about individual expression and tend to revolve
around their authors, messageboards are about creating a conversation amongst
its users where information can be shared freely and quickly. Messageboards are
a way to remove intermediaries from everyday life - for instance, instead of
relying on commercials and other forms of advertising, one can ask other users
for frank reviews of a product, movie or CD. By removing the cultural middlemen,
messageboards help speed the flow of information and exchange of ideas.
OpenDocument is 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.
Open source movie production is 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 Elephants Dream is said to
be the "world's first open movie"[8], created entirely using open source
technology.
An open source documentary film has a production process allowing 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 film, "The American Revolution," which will
examine the role that WBCN-FM in Boston played in the cultural, social and
political changes locally and nationally from 1968 to 1974, is currently in
production by the production company, Lichtenstein Creative Media.
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 contributors, at different times contribute to the final
piece.
Open-IPTV is IPTV that is not limited to one recording studio, production
studio, or cast. Open-IPTV uses the internet or other means to pool efforts and
resources together to create an online community that all contributes to a show.
Education
Within the academic community, there is discussion about expanding what could be
called the "intellectual commons" (analogous to the creative commons).
Proponents of this view have hailed the OpenCourseWare project at MIT, Thacker's
article on "Open Source DNA", the "Open Source Cultural Database",
openwebschool, and Wikipedia as examples of applying open source outside the
realm of computer software.
Open Source Curriculum are instructional resources whose digital source can be
freely used, distributed and modified, typically by classroom educators. The
open source curriculum development process invites the feedback and
participation in a community of educational practitioners working to create a
course or unit of study. Such development communities can form ad-hoc, within
the same subject area or around a common student need, and allow for a variety
of editing and workflow structures. OpenEducator, a non-profit organization
launched in 2006 using the open source Drupal CMS, aims to support an open
source curriculum development community for K-12 educators. Another project the
Open Source Learning Project is an open source curriculum project initiated by
Oaks Institute of Technology and Career Development- Public Safety Services.This
project is focused on curriculum and training materials for emergency services
and developing a resource for emergency services related research.
Innovation communities
The principle of sharing predates the open source movement; for example, the
free sharing of information has been institutionalized in the scientific
enterprise since at least the 19th century. Open source principles have always
been part of the scientific community. The sociologist Robert K. Merton
described the four basic elements of the community - universalism (an
international perspective), communism (sharing information), disinterestedness
(removing one's personal views from the scientific inquiry) and organized
skepticism (requirements of proof and review) that accurately describe the
scientific community today. These principles are, in part, complemented by US
law's focus on protecting expression and method but not the ideas themselves.
There is also a tradition of publishing research results to the scientific
community instead of keeping all such knowledge proprietary. One of the recent
initiatives in scientific publishing has been open access - the idea that
research should be published in such a way that it is free and available to the
public. There are currently many open access journals where the information is
available for free online, however most journals do charge a fee (either to
users or libraries for access). The Budapest Open Access Initiative is an
international effort with the goal of making all research articles available for
free on the internet. The National Institutes of Health has recently proposed a
policy on "Enhanced Public Access to NIH Research Information." This policy
would provide a free, searchable resource of NIH-funded results to the public
and with other international repositories six months after its initial
publication. The NIH's move is an important one because there is significant
amount of public funding in scientific research. Many of the questions have yet
to be answered - the balancing of profit vs. public access, and ensuring that
desirable standards and incentives do not diminish with a shift to open access.
Open source principles can also be applied to technical areas other than
computer software, such as digital communication protocols and data storage
formats (for instance the Indian development simputer).
Benjamin Franklin was an early contributor donating all his inventions including
the Franklin stove, bifocals and the lightning rod to the public domain.
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 and 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.