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Open Source - Why Do We Do It?
mikosullivan presents us with a unique opportuinity: "This Saturday, Sep 8, I have an appointment to meet with Congressman Rick Boucher to discuss open-source software. I made the appointment after talking to the congressman at a town-meeting here in Blacksburg, VA. During our short talk he asked a question that (not being a particularly talented public speaker) I found difficult to answer: why do open source software developers devote their time and talents to something they give away? That's the question I'd particularly like to answer: why do we do it? Answering this question may be the key to resolving public FUD about open source. This meeting is part of the
opensourcelobby.org efforts."
... well, I suppose they're related reasons really. But anyway.
First reason: suppose I have a problem with a computer, which needs code written to solve it. Once I've written the code and solved my problem, it seems a little unfair to make everybody else have to write their own solution when there's already one here. So I give the solution freely to friends who ask for it - and it's only a small step from there to putting it on a website for everybody.
Second reason, which I suppose is implicit in the first: I get a kick out of feeling I've benefitted everybody. Not just those people who pay for my code, to the feeble extent the licence agreement permits them to benefit; but anyone with a web browser who wants to download useful stuff off me. By contrast, when I work at my day job I'm always conscious that I'm primarily working to benefit them, and that any benefit that comes to people outside the company is a necessary side effect and not the actual goal.
(Yes, I know I'm not benefitting absolutely everybody, because there are people who don't have computers, or don't want to do the same things as me with their computers, who have no need for the stuff I write. Doesn't bother me; what I like is the idea that anyone who wants my stuff can get it. It's not necessary for everyone in the world to want it. People who don't want it don't have to have it, and hey, that's cool too :-)
Ego.
People write free software for the same reason they want nice cars and big houses - so people will notice and envy them. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's no big mystery.
Quite simply, people write software of the highest quality they're capable of, then give it away, in the hopes that it will become popular, and they'll become a household name (even if only among geeks). People want to be able to go into an IRC channel, or make a Usenet post, and say something like "Oh yeah? You're saying I don't know anything about software? Well, you know vi? I wrote that."
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Why does one friend of mine spend a couple hours a week visiting a couple prison? He specificlly is visiting prisoners in for life without parole, they didn't know each other before hand, and they are not relatives.
Why did one guy I work with spend one of his weeks of vacation in Mexico with habbitat for humanity building houses in Mexica? He doesn't speak spanish, has no mexican roots, Mexico is 1000 miles away, and he went in summer, not winter when you would want to leave home.
Why does my dad run the 4-h food stand at the fair, and then take the money he is paid for that and donate it back to 4-h?
Open source by comparition is easy, I need a program, and by going open source I get others to help me with it, making it better. Its not about non-programers using it (note that bug reports are useful and put you as part of the process), it is about programers doing something that alone they would take longer to do. Unfortunatly this obvous answer is wrong, open source has the same reasons at the root as the others.
Politicians make a decent salary, but generally much less than they could make in private industry. You might just as well ask the congressman why he puts his time and energy into public service.
The answer is probably similar for Open Source/Free software people 1) there's a certain satisfaction in doing something you feel is worthwhile, 2) the desire to leave the world a little better than when you found it, 3) recognition by your peers is very motivating, 4) even if you don't make money directly, it can help with your later career.
Another thing to keep in mind is that most of us entered the IT field because we have a passion for the technology. The reality of most corporate work is that we never get to do the really cool stuff that we dreamt about in school - real work is pretty mundane. Working on something more interesting on the side lets us do the stuff we dreamt of doing when we entered the field.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
I was thinking about this recently when checking out a news story on ZDNet, and reading someone's comment that "Open Source was communism".
The statement irritated me, but I didn't know why. Which is usually when I start doing some research, because not knowing why I'm irritated means there's something important to figure out.
I use open source in my own work - from development, web pages, graphical images, and the like. I could say "because it's cheap", and that would be true. I don't have a lot of cash, so most free (as in beer) programs appeal to me.
But there's two big reasons why I use Open Source software:
1: Free (as in speech) idea. Take Sun, who's setting up StarOffice to use XML as their default documents. XML - an open standard. What happens if 10 years from now I want to open a file, a story, an article I wrote in XML? I'd be able to read it, because I wouldn't be worried that MS went out of business/Caldera dropped Wordperfect/Lotus died out, or that the document editor I originally wrote didn't work on my new OS.
OS is democracy in its truest form (not like the US, which is a *republic*, thank you very much). Everyone has a voice, good, bad, or indifferent. It can't be bought out by business (which tries to force customers down a path to make it more money, sometimes when the customer doesn't want to go that way). It can't be subverted by government. The users, and the users alone, have the power to decide if a program lives or dies.
OS is also true innovation. The idea that "necessity is the mother of invention" applies here. If someone has that "itch they need to scratch" (like a program to edit tons of graphics from the command line (thank you ImageMagick!), it gets done. And just like the Internet is a place where you can find people that have the same interest as yourself, you can always find someone who has that same itch they need scratched, and sometimes people who are better than you at scratching it. (Which usually means you've got to have some humility to work with OS software.)
2: Most people comment on how OS software is so stable, and I've proven that time and time again. Why so stable? Because everybody can see the mistakes. Granted, your "ordinary users" (aka, non-developers) won't care. But to folks who's jobs deal with security, or reliability, the capacity to see why your program broke down and, even if you can't fix it yourself, at least tell other people why it happened so the developer can fix it makes the system that much stronger.
Right now, OS has overcome the first few hurdles of any system. First we had programs that work, now we have programs that work well. People have seen the need to make these programs more user friendly, and I see this being the next stage of OS software (companies like Mandrake are really setting good examples here). Interfaces will evolve - but they will evolve well, because thousands of voices will decide what works and what doesn't.
In the end, I truly believe that Open Source programs are the way to go. It makes business sense to do so (now I've harnessed the collective brain power of a *planet* to help with my projects - I just have to let go of the idea that I *own* the software, and I'll get software that will make my business better). It makes personal sense to do so (I know that my improvements to OS programs will help other people).
Of course, I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
(any lawyers out there want to add to the list?)
A congressman will be familiar with lawyers, and probably has a legal background himself, so comparing open source to legal pro bono work will put him on familiar ground and give you a shared context. Eg, ask "how would you feel if a big law firm called Pro Bono work 'unamerican'?")
Of course there are also all the commercial reasons why companies produce open source code. Its worth emphasising that many open source coders are actually employed to do it, so its not just a geek hobby. See Opensource.org for all the commercial reasons for releasing open source.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
And we do it becaus it means less time spent reinventing the wheel. over and over and over again, Open Source projects have allowed me as a developer to roll out stable and working applications for the company I work for. Applications with few bugs, most of which can be fixed easily and quickly either by my company or by the maintainers, resulting in higher quality software for less time spent. We want the best we can get, and the only way to know is to look under the hood and tweak the engine to maximum performance, minimal sound, or best fuel-consumption. Open Source allows us to do just that.
I just have to wonder... is the same question asked of Microsoft.. why do you close your source?
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
He tells them that open source is how every other industry works.
When I buy a car, I can take it apart and see how it works. I can even modify its workings. If I tried to fix a bug in a closed source program I could be sent to jail per the EULA.
It is important that lawmakers know that open source is not just a hairy programmer working late nights in his spare bedroom on a program he intends to give away. There are companies out there that have fully embraced open source because it's better for the consumer.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
That's a great answer to the question, and you could extend it like this:
"You know how some people just enjoy building model trains in their basement? Imagine what they would do if they could share their models... or link their tracks to others' tracks, in other basements. Imagine the excitement they'd have and how perfect they'd want their model to be. You'd almost certainly have configurations that would rival the original engineering decisions that go into building actual train yards, wouldn't you? Just like that, the net enabled a lot of model builders - i.e., people who enjoy programming - to share their models with every other model builder in the WORLD. So it's not surprising they built some amazing things, including the most stable large-scale operating system and the world's most-used web server."
I think people would instinctively understand an analogy like that, and it makes for great advocacy.
Open source is not unlike a huge pot luck dinner. We all bring something and we get back a complete meal rather than a single dish. The biggest difference is that software is easily copied. So we each brought a single serving and got back meals for the entire year.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.