When I talk about open source software, people often have difficulty understanding how open source software can be free. When I explain that open source software is created by a worldwide community of volunteers I usually end up creating more questions.
Consider the Firefox web browser. Firefox is an example of a very successful open source project. The New York Times reports that, "Only a small fraction of the people involved in building Firefox are paid employees at Mozilla, which has about 250 workers. An additional 1,000 or so programmers contributed code for the most recent Firefox release. There are also tens of thousands of other volunteers who help test and promote Firefox, write add-ons and help translate it into more than 70 languages."
Firefox is not alone though. Wired magazine reports that, "Ohloh, a company that tracks the open source industry, lists roughly 250,000 people working on an amazing 275,000 projects. That's almost the size of General Motors' workforce. That is an awful lot of people working for free, even if they're not full-time. Imagine if all the employees of GM weren't paid yet continued to produce automobiles!"
Now once you start to grasp how many people are contributing to open source projects, the next questions often is why?
Wired continues, "A survey of 2,784 open source developers explored their motivations. The most common was "to learn and develop new skills." That's practical. One academic put it this way (paraphrasing): The major reason for working on free stuff is to improve my own damn software."
While I'll admit that sometimes I don't understand how open source software continues to survive (and thrive) I have to admit that it works. Open source even seems to be growing and gaining traction.
As long as the open source model continues to work and produce great software I'll continue to recommend it to small businesses.
Ready the NYTimes article.
Read the entire Wired article: The New Socialism.
