Peter Kerr Asks, Where's The Diagram? - Open Source Open Society
Does, and how, does open source coding expand into the real world?
By Peter Kerr
( Please submit #OpenDiagram links to @OSOSNZ & @SCOOPNZ and we compile an Open Harvest special. Scoop/Enspiral Open Harvest Coverage)
It is slightly sacrilegious to say it, but there's aspects of Open Source Open Society that I don't get.
The OS//OS conference in Wellington's Michael Fowler Centre (April 16 & 17 April, 2015) does score highly on belief among the more than 350 attendees.
The fervour with which the notion and practice of open source code (programming that people are free to use and improve)
is fair enough.
Even digital giants such as Microsoft who for a long time tied millions of us into their proprietary software have
embraced open source.
As a way of building on and improving the digital infrastructure that all businesses, governments, organisations and
individuals operate their lives, open source has a hell of a lot going for it.
Where, but more importantly how, the idea of open can and is being extended to other areas of society is where I begin
to struggle.
Being a simple character, and being someone who would like to be able to explain this OS//OS concept to my 80 year old mum, what I really need to see is a diagram.
A picture that explains what this is all about.
Now, it isn't as if there aren't numerous liquid chalk pictures adding considerable charm to the views from the MFC.
There's nothing that says, “this is what it's all about.”
Now, the trouble could be that I'm not enough of a believer (not being a coder perhaps doesn't help) in the power of
open, and open source's ability to infiltrate into democracy, government, idea sharing, motherhood and apple pie.
One of the breakout sessions asked 'How can ventures adhere to open source principles and be financially successful? The
question wasn't really answered.
Whether the World Cafe: What is your greatest OPEN question? Comes up with more than platitudes too, will be
interesting.
Perhaps I'm too, well, closed.
This enthusiastic OS//OS crowd are evangelicals – believers in a type of religion that has no god, believers in the
belief that very little should be hidden, that everything should be shared.
I'd like to believe it can be so.
I really do...but.
I just need a diagram.
( Please submit #OpenDiagram links to @OSOSNZ & @SCOOPNZ and we compile an Open Harvest special. Scoop/Enspiral Open Harvest Coverage)
ENDS