Week 5 R685 Movement toward Free and Open Software

This week our class focused on open source as a strategy. Several of our articles were written around 2004-2005 as open source began to penetrate higher ed. Comments made by thought leaders predicting the direction of open source served as thought-provoking backdrops for what has happened during the last 5 years.

Communities of practice were identified as an important element of open source success.

I'd originally viewed these communities as primarily developers; individuals who could improve the original source code as well as develop new applications. However, I see communities differently now particularly in an educational setting using open source.

There are still developers, but also administrators who help establish strategy and objectives for the open source applications. There are also users within these communities who provide feedback on the designs. A final group within the community includes individuals who coach/advise users in how to apply the open source assets. In a commercial software product these coaches would be technical support resources.

I think a successful open source initiative will depend on a number of ingredients. The original code needs to work, and there needs to be value-adding problems that can be solved by the open source content. But I see multi-layered communities as a prequisite for open source now. It's not just about writing code. It's about solving problems.