“Microsoft isn’t evil, they just make really crappy operating systems.”

“The Linux philosophy is ‘Laugh in the face of danger’. Oops. Wrong One. ‘Do it yourself’. Yes, that’s it.”

I have written a draft for the abstract for my dissertation (see below). Its worth noting that the reason I am publishing my work in progress on my blog is due to the nature of my dissertation. As I writing around the theme of open source I see it fit for my work to be out in the public domain…although technically all work I produce at this moment in time is owned by the university!

Since Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation’s vision of a wholly free operating system and the harmonious marriage between the FSF’s work and Torvalds’ Linux kernel development there has been no going back. GNU/Linux gave birth to the foundations of the open source movement we see today. Free(dom) software has taken Information Technology by storm and it shows no signs of stopping with the open source ideology of being able to freely improve upon an existing product and redistribute it for a larger benefit transforming the way we use and interact with software, information resources and the web.

Through the use of open source and free(dom) software and with very little effort, knowledge or capital input individuals can now collaborate to produce products and reach markets that only large companies and corporations could previously (Tapsott, 2007: 11). This is providing a step up for small time producers and individuals to compete with well established businesses and will take the unprepared by surprise. Organisations such as YouTube and MySpace are founding a new form of business that sidesteps this attack on the economy and utilises the urge to mass collaborate. Termed Wikinomics, this new business model creates ‘real value for participants’ (Tapscott, 2007: 11) and has proved to be extremely lucrative for their founders. Traditional business models face the threat of becoming outdated and obsolete when trying to compete with the new age of collaboration and un-savvy businesses face an uncertain future where ‘only the connected will survive’ (Tapscott, 2007: 12).

This dissertation will strive to outline the problem facing the economy in that it lags behind many other markets in the free and open sharing of knowledge for superior outcomes. This has the potential to facilitate an economic meltdown giving way to a free(dom) world if businesses don’t embrace the collaboration age. I hope to prove that by utilising collaboration companies can produce better end user driven content, goods and services and can save the emerging global economy from falling at the first hurdle.

Working title: Can open source save the world?

‘Open source’ technologies are transforming the way we use and interact with the web with many social networking sites thriving off mass collaboration and also making millions for the site owners from user generated content. ‘Open source’ technology is also playing a massive role in transforming scientific practices, business, the economy and politics.

Businesses today are adapting their business model to accommodate emerging technologies such as ‘open source’. With sites like YouTube and MySpace founding a new form of business that has emerged from mass collaboration and user generated content termed ‘wikinomics’. This new ‘open source’ business model has replaced traditional forms of teamwork with “collaborations on an astronomical scale” (Tapscott, 2006). There is also a theory that one day these technologies could assist in the prevention of famine, disease and global warming. (West, 2007)

In my dissertation I plan to explore the implemented and potential uses of ‘open source’ processes and technologies within science, the economy and technology and try to deduce its future within these fields. At the outset I plan to define ‘open source’ as a technology and a process as well as take a look into its history, touching on its close relationship with the hacking community and its place within the advent of ‘web 2.0’. From this I hope to discover why it has gained such a prominent place in today’s technologies. Furthermore, I plan to investigate the politics involved in free software and the ’open source’ ideology and any legal issues that surround the subject in order to provide a good base for deducing whether ‘open source’ technologies have the potential to produce profound transformations in economic models, scientific practices and technological advances for a better future.

From my initial reading I feel I will be able to provide a substantial argument for the use of ‘open source’ technologies in order to solve complex problems and potentially aid the resolution of worldwide issues.

Bibliography (list in progress):

Benkler, Yochai (2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, London: Yale University Press
Stallman, Richard. Gay, Joshua (ed) (2002) Free Software, Free Society. Sebastopol: O’Reilly
Tapscott, Don & Williams, Anthony . (2006) Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. London: Atlantic Books
West, Ed. Macdonald, Fiona (ed) (2007) The keys to open the Net. Metro, 29 August. p17.
Rushkoff, D. (2003) Open Source Democracy: How online communication is changing offline politics (online resource). http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/opensourcedemocracy2
Bowman, S & Willis, C. (2003) We Media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information (online resource). http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php

After mulling over my initial ideas I decided that it wouldn’t really have any mileage and if I am to write a successful dissertation then the subject matter must have some depth to it and enable me to come to a proper conclusion.

Following on from my initial ideas, I started to think about how social networking sites expand and the mass collaboration that is involved in generating their content. I remember reading an article on how mass collaboration over the internet is changing the way businesses operate with sites like Youtube and Myspace making millions out of user generated content. This also got me thinking about the ways in which open source technology has changed our interaction with the web. Has open source had a effect on other processes or is it confined to the web?

I have found some interesting sites to get me started on this subject:
The effect that Open Source Software has had on the IT world - This article is from the Linux forums and outlines the basic effects of open source on the IT community
opensource.org - This site has some useful definitions and documentation on the OSI (open source initiative) .

Reality to pixels
A buzzword of the moment is ‘Social Networking’ and the whole Myspace/Facebook/Youtube phenomenon has been aided by the advent of Web 2.0 which has increased the ability for users to interact with the web. This level of interaction has increased to a point where users can be drawn away from reality and live a life within the web. Second Life is a prime example of this where people can now live a life within a virtual environment under the guise of an alter-ego and interact with millions of other users worldwide. Second Life also has its own currency (Linden Dollars) and economy which enables people to set up businesses and run companies within the virtual world culminating with its first real world millionaire in 2006.

“Since its beginning, the web has often been used as a tool to meet new people, but in recent years the interaction between web-users has grown dramatically…”. “The notion of Web 2.0, or an internet model where content is created and shared by users, has given birth to some of the most popular sites the internet has ever seen. So much so, that anybody who is anyone, wants to be part of the online social networking scene.” Taken from the BBC ‘Rise of the web’s social network‘