Open Source

Open Source and Crowdsourcing.

What are the values implicit in both collaborative open source activities and "crowd-sourced" activities on behalf of a corporation, school or organization? Has the open source movement created new forms, or just copies of old ones? What are the possibilities, here, for new cultural and economic institutions, and how might they be improvements on the status quo? 


Like the democratization of media, open source projects require only individual input and no expectation of recognition. One can assume that their viral Youtube video could propel them into fame but it should not matter. That person posted their video because they created it. Source code is the same way.

What I mean by all of this, philosophy aside, is that open source activities exist to better the world by mass contributions. For example, Mozilla Firefox is a hugely world-renowned internet browser. It is the open source evolution of the old Netscape browser. When Netscape could not make a profit as a private enterprise (largely due to AOL controlling the market), they made the program open source. Five years later when 56k and AOL were dead, Mozilla stood strong with one of the most active online development teams around. This team consisted of people from around the world who worked on Mozilla just to make it better, for themselves and for all other users. Today the community is still active.

Has the open source movement created new forms, or just copies of old ones?

Open source as a movement makes me think of communist work efforts. Everyone has a job, receives no special rewards and develops something greater than themselves for the population.

This class is about the Internet and media so I'll stick with that. The Internet itself was an open source project sponsored by the US government. Everyone connected computers and developed programs for everyone else to use. There were no companies like Microsoft or IBM around to make programs for profit. Profit was nonexistent because everything was free to use and expand upon.

New Institutions

The sky is the limit. If other institutions like the arts take the open source model they can create great things. The status quo can be increased because productivity can be higher when everyone works together. I really don't know how an economic institution would be 'open source.' It is possible for a school to have an open source project where they can collect donations for a cause. It could be an art project or an iPhone app about class cancellations.

Rushkoff in Digital Nation did segments on Korean video game addiction. I think open-source could work here. If concerned parents or fellow gamers see a problem with addictive games, they could create a timer that would not allow players to game to excess. This could work great in a PC Bong. Instead of just taking the gamer's money, they could cut them off like a bar would.

Opinion

I think mostly all programs from Photoshop to Firefox should be open source so the online community can improve whatever they see fit. It can only benefit the user and although the corporation may not make a lot of money, they can use the program's popularity to get sponsors or advertisements.