Open (source) Communities

The original title of this article was simply Open Communities.  It seemed like a fairly straightforward title to describe any group of people that either work together on specific projects or share resources between the participants.  Not quite communal, but somewhat similar.

Oddly, that title is the name of an organization that is specifically focused on "fair housing prices".  As mentioned in previous articles, it can be difficult to find appropriate information amongst all the chatter of a popular term.  With complete respect to what that organization indicates is its goal, I can not find any information that suggests it operates under an Open framework.

That said, an Open (Source) Community would be any community that openly collaborates, and exchanges and shares resources, especially knowledge, for the betterment of all, even as the individuals may operate independently of the larger group.

As we look into some Open (source) communities, we will discuss the pros and cons.  What to look for and what to look out for.

If we look at Open Gardens or similar properties, we might get visions of communal lives and organization.  What we are really talking about is a community garden where there is a green space for anyone to come along and plant a personal garden amongst other plots.

Of course, there are plenty of open, online communities.  These SIGs (special interest groups) may form, such as those of sourceforge and github repositories, around things like software.  Those are the most common.  While there are open communities that are forming up on social media like linkedin, facebook, Google+, and others, again revolving around things like software, or cooking, or gardening, or certain open hardware.  And there are the communities themselves that have their own, unique space, with blogs, and wikis, and mailing lists, etc.  Again, these are very special interest groups formed often around a single point of interest.

We then have communities that are organized online, at sites like meetup.  These sites don't cater to any specific interest, rather they provide a toolset for people who want to form a face to face meetup of groups of people who have a unique interest.

And now, we have other, international organizations that are in the early years of helping people specifically with Open Source interests to coordinate real world collaboration.  These include maker spaces, hacker spaces, and similar types of online / physical location communities.

As they say, this is where things start to get interesting.

At the very core of Open Source, is its root of freedom.  Now freedom is described as "free speech" rather than "free beer".  What that means is, beer has a cost, so free beer is getting something that has a cost, for nothing.  So freedom doesn't really mean no cost, it simply means no barrier or restriction.  But then, if we are talking about no barrier or restriction, then we could also be talking about free from a monetary cost.  Especially when we are talking about the poor, who should have equal opportunity to these freedoms.

Which brings us to the harsh reality that, things cost money.  Whether they be web hosting, electricity, land / property / buildings, etc.  It seems reasonable that some sort of membership fees might be involved or some other financial transactions that pay for these costs.  Unless a group is lucky enough to find a philanthropist who truly offers these resource at no charge, but then they themselves have some overhead costs that they might not want to hold, forever.

These are the things to keep in mind when we go out looking for open communities we would like to participate in.  Is it really an open community, or just a business running under the guise of an open community.  What is reasonable?

It really depends on each one of us, individually.  Many years ago, and even now, we have SIGs such as ham radio, or computer, or knitting, or similar clubs.  It was one of those unspoken rules that, if a club already existed, you joined it, rather than start a new one, directly competing against it.

What we have to do is, keep in mind the philosophy of Open Source software and what is called "forking".  In recent times, people copy and modify without consideration.  Forking, or copying an open source software project in order to change it, is quite common.  In the open source community, this is frowned upon as a first step.  Forking should only be done if enough requests have been made for changes to the existing software, without satisfaction, that the only way to get the changes is to fork the software.  This should be the same with Open source communities.  We should do our best to make requests of the existing community and, if given enough effort without results, only then should we fork a community.  And we should be making significant changes so that the forked community truly is much better, or it is significantly different than the "master" community.

So seek out an open source community in your area.  If one does not exist for your specific interest, consider using the toolsets of open source community organizations.  If one does exists, do your best to work within its mandate.  If you cannot and have made enough, reasonable requests for change, only then might you seek to develop your own open source community that is unique and / or better for you and others, than the ones that exist.