Tag: open source

Andrew Keen (Cult of the Amateur) predicts that the downturn in the economy will deal a blow to open source software and information. This position is similar to my concern expressed several days ago that the economy may lead to the termination of free online services that are attractive to educators. 

Mass unemployment and a deep economic recession comprise the most effective antidote to the utopian ideals of open-source radicals. (Keen)

As I have considered the present situation, I have generated several concerns not presented by Keen. Free resources will be less likely because:

• companies may withdraw a commitment to “exploratory time” for employees – e.g., Google allows employees time (20% I think) to work on personally defined initiatives instead of requiring them to spend 100% of paid time on assigned projects. BTW – universities often offer a similar opportunity (e.g., 20% time for secondary activities that pay – clinical psychologists seeing clients). The original motive as I understand it was to offer creative people an opportunity to be creative within the company as a way to keep them from going off to form their own companies. The threat of individuals leaving is greatly reduced in times of constriction.
• companies may withdraw web services and open source projects that do not directly generate revenue and only promote the company (e.g., Google services that do not display ads)
• individuals stressed by competition will be reluctant to contribute their time for the “good of the group”.

For this post to make any sense, you first must visit the TED talks web site and listen to the presentation on open source economics by Yochai Benkler. The comments generated by this presentation are also interesting.

Many theoretical ideas associated with open source and the participatory web fascinate me. I find myself caught on both sides of many issues. The idea of creating ways to capture collective intelligence is quite appealing. However, I also create content and make part of my income from a commercial product. How do individuals make their living when important products are generated by hobbyists? When someone makes a case for the economics of open source, I try to understand what he/she has to say.

What I struggle with is taking present examples through to some long term resolution. For example, open source software. No doubt, Apache is a great web server. Linux is a reasonable operating system. NeoOffice (Open Office for the Mac) is an effective office suite. Why pay for the commercial versions? This is a reasonable question and many of us use such products. However, consider pushing this software development model a bit. Who creates this software? These folks are not your local car dealer, grocer or college prof. These are professional software people who work outside their professional roles in a collaborative creative enterprise. But, what happens should these open source products threaten the projects these folks work on for their income? Even if people have the good sense not to develop hobby applications that compete with their professional specialties, the hobby products do compete with the income source for someone. What happens if most commercial ventures find themselves in competition with a group of hobbyists? Will the entire system break down? What incentive would their be for professionals to acquire the training and develop the skills required to function at a reasonable level? As this system matures will the system find a way to strike a balance that does not limit the development of future talent?

Halloween eve at the Grabe home. We are waiting for trick or treaters to show up at the door. Business has been slow because it has turned cold.

We decide to do a little experimenting – Cindy in the living room in front of the television – me in my office. Both have our computers going. Cindy wants to try a new program she has heard about called Yugma. The screen capture below is my computer screen while I mess around in Flickr captured from Cindy’s desktop. Pretty impressive. This is the Pro version (everyone gets to experiment with the Pro version and then it reverts to the free version in a few weeks).

I am familiar with commercial products (Breeze – or at least what used to be called Breeze) for distance ed applications so I have some experience with the desktop sharing thing. We traded files, used the markup tools to markup and annotate the shared screen, recorded a session, switched who shared the screen with whom, IMd, etc. Everything worked as advertised.

I am guessing there are some useful applications that extend beyond our strange way of spending our evenings. Take a look.

I have always admired those who write the open source programs I use. The ideal of a group of individuals working together to build resources by contributing what they can is so cool.

For the most part I have always been a user rather than a contributor. The skill level of those who write WordPress, Mediawiki, Drupal, Scuttle and the other software I run is far beyond my own. It is enough to make you feel a little guilty.

Today someone wrote and asked me for the code I wrote to allow those who use my educational resource database to rate the value of the resources I include. I sent the code. I am not sure anyone will be able to interpret my code – I pretty much just hack around until what I want to do works. Still, I now feel like I made a contribution.

This is a comment on the movement to offer university instructional content to the public. The experiences generating this comment were pretty much random events, but perhaps the co-occurence of such events during a given day imply something other than randomness.I learned today that UC Berkeley has decided to offer the content of some courses on YouTube. The course that caught my attention was SIMS 141 which included a lecture (actually more of a Q&A) by Sergey Brin. Several major institutions have been offering course content for a few years now, but the YouTube approach is new.At one level the high tech approach is amusing – in several of the Berkeley courses, the visual presentation consists of college profs lecturing and writing on the chalk board. It was the combination of YouTube and chalk board that struck me as unusual. I can’t say I have watched a chalk board based lecture in many years. Brilliant scholars aside, perhaps the local tech folks ought to focus on improving the lecture supplements offered to the students sitting in the seats before streaming the content to the world.I don’t know what I think of the move made by several major institutions to offer the content of lectures courses for general consumption. Because I am teaching Intro Psych this semester, I have been listening to Intro Psych lectures available from several major institutions. My guess is that most students listening to these lectures and the lectures of my colleagues would be unable to associate the lecture with the institution. Perhaps this is more about Intro Psych than the scholarly expertise of the instructors. Perhaps leading national scholars in visual perception are no better at explaining topics in abnormal pscyhology than my colleagues.I have a different opinion of the UC Berkeley SIMS (internet search, information seeking) course. The individuals presenting and the focus of the course are unique and not available on most campuses.The University of Minnesota College of Public Health presented at the Beyond Boundaries conference and outlined their approach to podcasting/vodcasting. What they describe is probably a better model for offering resources to the public. They offer short pieces on specific topics, profile graduate students in the program, and provide access the invited lectures. They have invested production resources in creating these products. To me, this is a better approach to generating resources with broad appeal.So – offering information to the public is great, but who is the intended public and what is it that this public is expected to do with this information? What if introductory content is of general interest, but the institutions offering content do no better job in presenting this information than most other institutions? What if advanced content is done particularly well at some institutions, but the audience for this content is mostly at these same institutions.If this trend continues (more institutions making more courses available), I predict that some system for locating courses, perhaps even lectures on specific topics, that are especially informative, creative, or motivating will emerge. It will probably look like some type of iTunesU Digg mashup.

If you like exploring open source software, my most recent recommendation is NeoOffice. This is a Macintosh only implementation of OpenOffice and runs on the Macintosh without xterm and using traditional Macintosh key stroke conventions. I have been using this suite now for a little over a week without problems, but the developer does warn all users to backup often.