thoughts on open source

Today I'd like to start sharing some insight I have won on my way as a do-it-yourself coder.
Do not be affraid, this will be understandable by normal humans as well :)

Actually, the overall feeling of "I don't have a clue how the internet works" is something that motivates me to address some things, which I feel should get known among all users of this beloved new medium and the machines we use to use it.

So, "open source" be the topic of todays post.
Open source is not strictly related to coding or computers, it is a concept of making the world better by pooling knowledge and making it accessible to anyone - as opposed to keeping knowledge to one-self and protecting it by patents and copyrights to thrive on knowing more than others.

Open source is not a radical concept, it does not neglect the idea of copyright, but followers of the open source idea are happyly sharing their insights and ideas.
I do not know any product that has been replaced by something that came out of the open source community, but I will add a few well known open source products which have become equally good as their copyrighted and high priced brothers supplied by the industry.

If you have ever shown a teenager how to grab a few chords on a guitar without taking a fee for that, you have been part of the open source idea :)

If you supply a great track along with some well written chord info that is suitable for someone willing to learn, there again you are sharing knowledge for free. Excellent, I'd say!

So, how is wikiloops open source? Strictly speaking: It is not!
Since no one is able to access the code I have written which lets this platform work, the wikiloops code is not open source at this moment.

One of the major concerns why it is not is: security - all potential ways to hack a website are open to the public once the code is published, and as long as I am still a lonely do-it-yourself guy, I rather not risk that.

The way wikiloops works & spreads good music for free is very similar to the spirit of the open source community, and the transparency policy I have been following is also inspired by open source organisations.

The reason why I dedicate todays blog post to the open source movement is simple:
Without all those people writing brilliant articles and explanations on how to program a website, who publish their knowledge all over the internet for free, we would not be here today.
I never went to any school or university teaching informatics, all I know about coding today was aquired from the internet.
Besides my personal appreciation, I'd like to motivate you a little to get involved yourself if you feel open source is a good initiative.

That is what I have been doing lately, not by publishing the wikiloops codebase, but by joining the developer teams of two of the plugins we are using on wikiloops.
I have always been meaning to give something back for all I learned, and now I am really proud to be able to help those pioneers with some feedback - just like the wikiloops members help me out by reporting problems they may have, I have supplied ideas for changes (no code involved!), some of which were quickly added to the projects to-improve lists.
It is amazing to realize how many webmasters may one day benefit from some feedback I gave on a plug-in they all use. With the "swarm intelligence" of many people, things can get done which used to be only possible when recruiting a bunch of highly payed professionals.
Not that I'd be happy if those lost their jobs, but I feel much better using products which do not only work transparently, but are free to use as well!

Lets put it this way:
If I have the choice between a company-product which might include some technology I am not informed about (like a phone that may silently track my movement, or a web-browser which might track where I have been online) and a product that has been developed "in the open" and reviewed by many individuals who are not making profit, I guess it is easy to know what I will do.

If I could, I'd love to write down the number of hours that have been spent working on things that were intentionally given away for free afterwards.
These people had a motivation to do that, which no businessman of the old capitalist kind will be able to share:
They believed in making this world a bit better by working together, and did not let monetary aspects keep them from doing it. Revolutionary, peacefull and successfull.

Let me end with the promised list of popular things that came out of open source thinking and which you may be familiar with:
- Modzilla Firefox - the well known browser is open source!
- OpenOffice - the open-source version of texteditor and table-calc (equivalent to Microsofts Word & Excel)
- Linux - the operating system alternative to iOS and Windows
- GIMP - easy to use drawing & picture editing software (used for wikiloops)
- PIWIK - statistic tool replacing GoogleAnalytics (used on wikiloops, that's were I collaborated lately)
- audacity & ardour - audio recording + mixing software
ALL of the above are totally free to download and use, and there is thousands of other applications out there.

I hope you enjoyed the read and feel inspired a little bit! There is awesome stuff going on, and being part of something is just a click away...



Let me end with the wikiloops-stats of the day (be they my contribution?)
18.211 happy users
23.063 openly available tracks online