Open Source Software - Brazil takes on Mighty Microsoft

What drives us to take elements out, develop them and put them back in and thus drive open source software? As we examine this week, there are several possible reasons:

• Necessary fixing or improvement of code - if something is not quite right, it needs to be fixed. For example, Firefox was developed as an alternative to Internet Explorer and all its 'bugs'.
• Developing and showcasing skills - sometimes we just want people to praise our competence and skills.
• Contributing to the greater good of the community - software is refined and improved for the benefit not just to the individual, but for the whole community
• Scratching an itch - entertainment, learning and interest are primary motivators in encouraging development of open source software.

I think the last point about scratching an itch is particularly relevant. The idea was originally explored by Eric S. Raymond in his essay The Cathedral and The Bazaar, in which he says "every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch". But does open source actually work and is it a threat to closed source software programs?

The concept of open source development is "the rapid creation of solutions within an open, collaborative environment" (Sourceforge, 2008). So even if open source development begins with a single developer wanting to scratch their itch, as more people participate and collaborate, more people scratch their own itches as well as others' itches.

Although the theory of developing open source software may seem like a nightmare - tens, hundreds or even thousands of individuals changing and re-entering code whenever and wherever - it has been proven to work so long as there is someone in charge. If we look at the computer operating system Linux we see that although many developers worked on the software, Linus Torvalds oversaw the entire project and co-ordinated the various different aspects.

That is what makes open source so interesting - it really should not run so smoothly but it does. And not only does it run smoothly, in many ways open source software is actually better than 'closed' source software.

Open source can constantly be changed, developed, fixed and improved far faster than closed source, while the collaboration "promotes a higher standard of quality, and helps to ensure the long-term viability of both data and applications." (Sourceforge, 2008) And it's often free.

Or as stated in Linus' Law of Software Engineering "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" (Raymond, 1999), meaning with enough people collaborating on a project all potential bugs and glitches will be identified and fixed before the product is distributed.

And it is not just software developers, those 'in the know' or even home computer users who are taking advantage of open source software - federal agencies in France, Germany, China and the United States now use Linux for servers, considering Linux "more stable and less susceptible to viruses and hacker attacks" (Wired, 2003).

While other countries are also adopting alternate open source operating systems, Brazil is leading the way in South America, adopting the Linux software system in their government departments as a cost-cutting measure.

In 2005, the Brazilian government was paying Microsoft fees of around 1200 Brazilian reas (US$500) for every computer and estimated it could save $120 million dollars a year simply by switching to open source software (Kingstone, 2005).

Considering Microsoft earned "between 6 percent and 10 percent of its $318 million in revenues from the government" (Wired, 2003) in the fiscal year ending in June 2003, the switch to open source software will definitely sting.

So what is Microsoft doing to try to put a stop to the Linux switch?

So far they have released several statements questioning the reliability of open source software operating systems (particularly Linux) while at the same time saying every government had the right to choose which operating system they preferred to use.

In 2005 Microsoft also launched a stripped-down cheaper version of Windows XP in Brazil (Kingstone, 2005) aimed at attracting (or re-attracting) customers, but in a country where roughly 20% of the 191 million population own a computer this is unlikely to make a huge impact.

Besides, Microsoft has to compete with a Brazilian government intent on not having to pay licensing fees to Microsoft and spreading the message. At the Telecentro free computer centres, where Brazilians who cannot afford to buy a computer can come and learn to surf the Web, are learning using free, open source software such as Linux (Wired, 2003). This is coupled with the Brazilian government's scheme to sell heavily discounted computers to low-income Brazilians buying their first computer (Benson, 2005). What makes it possible? Free, open source software.

In the light of the support the movement towards open source software is receiving from everyday Brazilians as well as the government, Microsoft's market stranglehold may be beginning to loosen. In Brazil at least.

References

Benson, T (2005, March 29) Brazil: Free Software's Biggest and Best Friend. The New York Times. Retrieved 13 April, 2008 from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/technology/29computer.html

Kingstone, S. (2005, June 2) Brazil Adopts Open-Source Software. BBC News. Retrieved 12 April, 2008 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4602325.stm

Raymond, E.S (1999) The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Retrieved 11 April, 2008 from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_3/raymond/

Sourceforge (2008) What is Sourceforge.net? Retrieved 13 April, 2008 from http://alexandria.wiki.sourceforge.net/What+is+SourceForge.net?

Wired (2003) Brazil Gives Nod to Open Source . Retrieved 13 April, 2008 from http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2003/11/61257

Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0

I'd like to begin with a confession - before researching this topic I thought that Web 2.0 was a software upgrade. Yes, I believed I could download Web 2.0 when I got sick of using Web 1.0.

But what does it mean when I say Web 1.0 and Web 2.0?

Web 1.0 is used to describe a type of website, and even web experience, that is one-way and static. Web 1.0 meant there was small number of publishers for a large number of readers and user-led content creation was minimal.

Web 2.0 describes the move towards networking, information sharing and collaboration using Internet technologies.

Although these definitions are broad and certainly brief, I think they demonstrate an important point to remember when discussing Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. That is - there was no dramatic change in technology to create a separate and defined Web 2.0, it was more a societal and cultural change in which the user became more actively involved in the Internet experience.

The term 'Web 2.0' was actually first used by Tim O'Reilly when thinking of a name for a conference he was holding back in 2004. He and conference co-founder Dale Dougherty formulated their sense of Web 2.0 by examples, some of them I feel are a little too technical so here are their brainstormed ideas.

By 2005, Tim O'Reilly had further clarified his defintion of Web 2.0:
"Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications & [are] delivering software as a continually–updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an ‘architecture of participation,’ and & deliver rich user experiences" (Scholz, 2008).

But then in July 2006 in an IBM developerWorks podcast, the creator of the WorldWideWeb Tim Berners-Lee said the term 'Web 2.0' was nothing but "jargon" and that "nobody even knows what it means". Berners-Lee says Web 1.0 was always intended to connect people, and indeed the point of the Web all along was to be "a collaborative space where people could interact" (IBM, 2006).

Confused? Me too.

On one hand we have Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty, along with countless bloggers, researchers, academics and others in the technology business saying Web 2.0 is different from Web 1.0 and can be defined. On the other hand we have Tim Berners-Lee saying there is no Web 2.0, indeed there was never a Web 1.0 - there is just Web.

But in fact, both Tim O'Reilly and Tim Berners-Lee agree that there was a large shift in the way people interacted with technologies. The only difference is Tim O'Reilly decided to give it a name and Tim Berners-Lee did not.

To be honest this topic really had me lost. It is all just too technical and I felt I was trying to find something that was not necessarily there.

Then I read Dana Gardner's blog Scrap Web 2.0, yes, but embrace Knowledge 2.0 surely and I had a light bulb moment. This is so much bigger than whether we should apply the terms 'Web 1.0' and 'Web 2.0' (in my opinion we should, simply so everyone is on the same page), this is not just changing the way we connect - this is changing the very fundamentals of what it means to be human.

The fact that we can debate Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0; the fact that I or anyone else can blog about the topic; the fact I can access trascripts, defintions and opinions to make an informed decision; the fact that when I want to know something I immediately Google it; the fact that I can use the word 'google' and be understood.

Ten years ago the above would have been unfathomable, but I did each of those just to write this post.

Instead, "what we are up to here is actually Knowledge 2.0, and it is at least a millennial trend, and it shows every indication of having anthropologic impact. That is, Knowledge 2.0 is changing the definition of what it is to be a modern human, individually and collectively" (Gardner, 2006).

As the Web keeps changing and developing and we near the next great shift in the way we interact with technologies, the greatest change that will occur will occur within us. The people who change the technologies are the same people who will be changed by the technologies.


References

Gardner, D (2006, August 31) Scrap Web 2.0, yes, but embrace Knowledge 2.0 surely.
Retrieved 5 April, 2008 from http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2340

Scholz, T (2008) Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0. First Monday, 13.
Retrieved 5 April, 2008 from, http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2138/1945

Transcript of IBM interview with Tim Berners-Lee (2006, July 27) Originator of the Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium talks about where we've come, and about thechallenges and opportunities ahead.
Retrieved 6 April, 2008 from,
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int082206.txt

Online Communities

I'd like to begin by defining the term online (or virtual) community, and I particularly liked the Howard Rheingold definition from the lecture:

He defines online communities as "social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on public discussion long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace" (Fernback and Thompson, 1995).

I liked this definition because it implies that communities are not just a collection of like-minded people discussing shared interests, but instead are groups of people discussing their interests with feeling and forming relationships - which may be just as 'real' as relationships formed in an offline world - and otherwise connecting with people on a potentially very deep level.

An important question raised when reading about online communities is: how do online communities organise themselves? We can first examine offline communities, where we see organisational capabilities limited largely by physical and geographical boundaries. In an online community these barriers are non-existent and we see a different form of organisation based on democratic participation, and a sense of shared social norms and values that are potentially drawn from the 'real' world and applied to the 'virtual' world.

Another topic explored this week was the reasons for joining an online community. Apart from somewhat obvious reasons such as connecting with people with similar interests, online communities provide a means to achieve a common goal - as seen in A Swarm of Angels, an open source project aiming to fund, create and distribute a film via the Internet.

But online communities can also facilitate interaction and the forming of relationships with people of a different background (race, ethnicity, economic, geographic, cultural), with whom you may not have otherwise conversed.

Or, as Terry Flew describes, the desire for strong communities "as an antidote to the sense of alienation and disenfanchisement seen as characteristic of modern, industrial, capitalist societies" (2004, 64). In other words, we look to the online world to fill a void that may exist in our offline lives.

Terry Flew also looks at online identities, seeing virtual communities as "a site of play and performativity through the creation of online identities more broadly indicative of the transition from modernity to postmodernity (2004, 65).

Terry's use of identities (plural) is important, as James Slevin notes (in Flew 2004 68): the tendency of most Internet users is not to commit themselves to a single community, but to participate in and move in and out of many different communities.

I personally prefer Sherry Turkle's theory (in Flew, 2004, p. 65) because it also explores the idea that the online world and the offline world are no longer separate but are instead permanently inter-connected. Turkle explains that the offline or 'real' world is merely one window through which someone can develop and express their personality. In other words, although the 'Phoebe' I am in an online world may be completely different from the offline world 'Phoebe', neither is a true and complete representation of myself but are instead fragments of my personality that when pieced together are the real Phoebe.



References

Fernback, J & B. Thompson (1995) Virtual Communities: Abort, Retry, Failure?
Retrieved 3 April, 2008 from http://www.rheingold.com/texts/techpolitix/VCcivil.html

Flew, T. (2004) New Media: An Introduction, Melbourne: OUP

An Introduction

Hello!
My name is Phoebe and this is my blog for KCB201 Virtual Cultures. This is my first foray into the wonderful world of blogging, so we'll see how things go!
This is designed to be a way of discussing and delving deeper into what we cover in Virtual Cultures. I'm finding it interesting and I hope you do too.
Keep reading!
Phoebe