More on Open Source

I suppose I should bring some more clarity to the philosophy of open source that I claim to loosely base this blog on.

This might be best achieved by some examples:

You can't talk about open source without mentioning Linux. Linux remains one of the few alternatives to Microsoft and Apple in the desktop environment. From Wikipedia, "Its underlying source code is available for anyone to use, modify, and redistribute freely, and in some instances the entire operating system consists of free/open source software." Linux has been the territory of only the nerdiest geeks for a long time but the emergence of user-friendly packaged distributions like Ubuntu has led to Linux becoming a viable alternative for the average computer user fed up with proprietary nonsense.

If you want to do something on a computer there is almost always going to be an open source solution already developed for exactly that purpose. Someone named Jason has compiled an awesome list of open source software for replacing windows software.

Some of my fav's

Firefox (web browser)

OpenOffice (Office Suite)
Completely replaces and can handle all powerpoint, spreadsheet, and word processing tasks with ease and greater compatibility.

Gaim (Instant Messenger)
Chat on any service - AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN, Jabber, ICQ - with this multi-platform, tabbed IM client.

Don't think that this is just limited to computer software though. An amazing humanitarian cause can reap huge benefits from this model. The Open Architecture Network is one such cause. According to this article,

The Open Architecture Network is a collaborative database which Architecture for Humanity hopes will make it easy for architects, designers and engineers from around the world to freely share their work, evaluate and modify existing solutions, and collaborate around new approaches. Think of it as the Wikipedia of humanitarian design, the first big step towards open source design.

With a coalition of sponsors and partners, including Sun, Architecture for Humanity built and is starting to test a system designed to be not just a repository of good ideas, but a tool for collaboration and research. Users will be able, Cameron says, to search existing ideas based on a number of criteria (such as, say, "housing, affordable, tropical, community-designed, passive solar, bamboo materials) and the ratings of other users.

As you can see, there are very few, if any, problems that don't benefit from an open source design! Got any counter examples? Post 'em in the comments.