Open Options | The open source community

Current users remark on the generosity of the open source community, especially the thriving email lists and Web sites. The growth of the Internet and the success of open source are deeply connected. See: The Internet & open source

Community: The principle behind the hype

Many programmers help create open source software but are never paid for their work. Some people are puzzled by a community of talented individuals donating their hard work. Their improvements can even be used in proprietary software, in which "the hood is welded shut."

Talent is rewarded with celebrity.

Open source succeeds on the principle of community. In place of money, programmers expect appreciation and recognition. Talent is rewarded with celebrity. The Internet's hyper-connected subcultures gives master programmers maximum celebrity in their particular fields. This is a feedback loop. For example, Richard Stallman is famous for his GNU C Compiler, and his fame attracted volunteers to later GNU projects.

Educators describe this community as a "culture of giving" (much like Raymond's bazaar). They rely on the community for technical assistance one day and help other people the next day. Grateful community members can give back indirectly by donating time or money to others. Some formal mechanisms even exist to "pay it forward" (e.g. http://ww.affero.com).

"Raise the level of the ocean and all ships rise together." - Jeremy Hogan, Red Hat

This atmosphere of "share and share alike" is sometimes misunderstood as unrealistically egalitarian or dangerously chaotic. Open source doesn't mean communism or anarchy. Most successful open source projects aren't as democratic as they may sound. Successful projects usually have a strong leader (or leadership team). Many projects fail to attract enough volunteers or fall apart in conflict. However, the open process means everyone has the right to fork: to advance the code in a different direction. It may be more desirable for 100 programmers to create one word processor, but if four groups of 25 programmers want to create four different word processors, they can.

Open source software companies have to navigate this "cooperative competition." Vendors package and distribute unique brands with "value added" modifications. Some proponents admit that profit margins may be smaller than in the past. But since the process and formats are open, it's difficult for any company to achieve a monopoly through customer lock in.

Linux itself is an example of cooperative-competition, in that our engineers work for Red Hat, and Conectiva for Conectiva, but at the upstream kernel level, at the community level, they all work together. For example we coordinate security releases with other vendors, rather than release and accuse others of being unsecure, if we right a nice bit of code, the other vendors get it. - Jeremy Hogan, Red Hat (personal communication, December 13, 2002)

Even some proprietary software eventually becomes open source. For example, a computer game has a limited shelf life because a better game will eventually seize the market. So some game companies give away their old source code a few years after the game is released. This pleases their customer base and enriches the gaming community.

Educators can probably relate to a culture of giving better than many people. The open source community is especially welcoming and helpful to educators, because teaching is a virtuous profession and schools have limited resources. For advice on dealing with the community, see: "Join the open source community"

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This Web site was developed and maintained by the Northwest Educational Technology Consortium. The federal funding for the regional technology consortia program ended on September 30, 2005, and no further updates are planned unless additional funding becomes available. However, much of the content is still useful and NWREL will continue to provide access to this site to support educators and to meet its own technical assistance needs.