Web 2.0, the social network, the web made up of blogs, photo-sharing sites and tags, thrives on active participation. The value of this network increases not just due to more people reading other people's blogs, viewing their photo's and using their tags to search the web, but by more people actively blogging, sharing and tagging themselves. Hence, the network effect should only be contributed to those who actively contribute to such a social network.
Open source communities are essentially networks as well. Due to the contribution of many volunteers someting of value is created. Following the success of Linux, Apache and Firefox, just to name a few, the open source development model seems to be the model of the future. That is, if users and/or companies are to act as active contributors and/or participants within these communities, instead of 'leachers' who just take and use the fruits of others' labour, hoping that the latter will continue doing their 'free, open source thingy'. Such behaviour would eventually lead to programmers and other creatives being less and less willing to make their creations available to others.
A first sign that the open source development model may not always work as advertised is found in the problems that both the Firefox and OpenOffice communities experienced with respect to finding enough capable and motivated programmers to work on new releases. Obviously, a large user base does not automatically translate in a large contributor base. In an interview with BusinessWeek Online, Marc Fleury of JBoss fame actually called the viability of the commercial use of the open source development model in question altogether.
At the same time, however, a lot of commercial and non-commercial open source initiatives are underway to develop business applications ranging from data warehouses and CRM systems to complete ERP systems. Companies have a lot to gain from such open source software; save on the cost of licenses and support, avoid supplier lock-in, customize applications to own needs, etcetera. But if the majority of them remain passive users, who just enjoy the benefits without giving anything back to these communities, then the open source party may soon be over. It should be more of a 'give and take', whereby companies that use open source business applications at times try to contribute components and/or code and become involved in steering the direction in which these projects develop. Some of them may actually turn in-house development projects into open source projects, thereby leveraging the knowledge of the community and benefitting from extremely Quality Control ('many eyes make all bugs shallow'). Even if a company does not have an IT department capable of the above, it may still contribute through user testing or documenting the application.
Similar arguments hold with respect to open source initiatives in the consumer space. Here, however, the problem may be less stringent as the pool of users from which active contributors will come is much larger. But even if you don't want or can't contribute directly, you can always make (small) monetary contributions. Bram Cohen, the creator of Bittorrent, earns himself a comfortable living through voluntary donations and it is also through donations that contributors to IT Conversations get rewarded for their efforts. Whereas in the past incompatible international payment systems made it difficult (and expensive) for good-intentioned users of shareware to pay the creator his requested fee, internet-based payment systems such as PayPal now make this as easy as buying a book at Amazon. Just think of what alternatives to using an application or service would cost you or how much effort you would have to put in to establish something similar yourself. Seen in that light, such donations seem to be the least anyone can contribute to an open source community.
Open source communities are essentially networks as well. Due to the contribution of many volunteers someting of value is created. Following the success of Linux, Apache and Firefox, just to name a few, the open source development model seems to be the model of the future. That is, if users and/or companies are to act as active contributors and/or participants within these communities, instead of 'leachers' who just take and use the fruits of others' labour, hoping that the latter will continue doing their 'free, open source thingy'. Such behaviour would eventually lead to programmers and other creatives being less and less willing to make their creations available to others.
A first sign that the open source development model may not always work as advertised is found in the problems that both the Firefox and OpenOffice communities experienced with respect to finding enough capable and motivated programmers to work on new releases. Obviously, a large user base does not automatically translate in a large contributor base. In an interview with BusinessWeek Online, Marc Fleury of JBoss fame actually called the viability of the commercial use of the open source development model in question altogether.
At the same time, however, a lot of commercial and non-commercial open source initiatives are underway to develop business applications ranging from data warehouses and CRM systems to complete ERP systems. Companies have a lot to gain from such open source software; save on the cost of licenses and support, avoid supplier lock-in, customize applications to own needs, etcetera. But if the majority of them remain passive users, who just enjoy the benefits without giving anything back to these communities, then the open source party may soon be over. It should be more of a 'give and take', whereby companies that use open source business applications at times try to contribute components and/or code and become involved in steering the direction in which these projects develop. Some of them may actually turn in-house development projects into open source projects, thereby leveraging the knowledge of the community and benefitting from extremely Quality Control ('many eyes make all bugs shallow'). Even if a company does not have an IT department capable of the above, it may still contribute through user testing or documenting the application.
Similar arguments hold with respect to open source initiatives in the consumer space. Here, however, the problem may be less stringent as the pool of users from which active contributors will come is much larger. But even if you don't want or can't contribute directly, you can always make (small) monetary contributions. Bram Cohen, the creator of Bittorrent, earns himself a comfortable living through voluntary donations and it is also through donations that contributors to IT Conversations get rewarded for their efforts. Whereas in the past incompatible international payment systems made it difficult (and expensive) for good-intentioned users of shareware to pay the creator his requested fee, internet-based payment systems such as PayPal now make this as easy as buying a book at Amazon. Just think of what alternatives to using an application or service would cost you or how much effort you would have to put in to establish something similar yourself. Seen in that light, such donations seem to be the least anyone can contribute to an open source community.
