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Key Quotes:
“For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one. As one person put it, ‘Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.’ For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.”

Richard Stallman, “Why ‘Free Software’ is better than ‘Open Source’”, (2007 July 19). Retrieved on 2007 October 06. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html

“There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.”

Eric S. Raymond. “How To Become A Hacker”. (2007 Mar 21 ). Retrieved on 2007 October 06. http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

“In more ‘artistic’ terms, you might consider the operating system to be the collection of pigments and colors used to create a painting: they are not the painting itself, but they are obviously a rather important ingredient – and a lot of the great painters spent a large portion of their time on making the paint, often by hand, in order to get their paintings to look just right.”

Linus Torvalds, “Linux”, in Hannes Leopoldseder and Christine Schöpf (eds), Cyberarts 99: An International Compendium Prix Ars Electronica, Linz: ORF and Landesstudio, 1999, 24-27

Research Questions:

1) Compare Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica and dicuss which one is a better means to deliver knowledge nowadays.

2) What is the impact of OS-INT on traditional informational products?

3) Discuss the crucial factors to support sustainable development of OS-INT projects?

Bibliography and Links

Eric R. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Beijing: O'Reilly, 1999, 97-106 - It talks about the hacker culture in Open Source Movement and it is quite readable. Felix Stalder and Jesse Hirsh, “Open Source Intelligence” in First Monday, www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_6/stalder/index.html - It is very useful for you to understand about the principles and examples of OS-INT.

Linus Torvalds, “Linux”, in Hannes Leopoldseder and Christine Schöpf (eds), Cyberarts 99: An International Compendium Prix Ars Electronica, Linz: ORF and Landesstudio, 1999, 24-27 - You can know more about Linus Torvalds and his ideas on Linux. But it is difficult to understand.

Richard Poynder, “The Open Source Movement”, in Information Today, Vol. 18, Issue 9, October 2001, www.infotoday.com/it/Oct01/poynder.htm - It is a useful article that gives you an overview of Open Source Movement.

Stacy Schiff, “Can Wikipedia conquer expertise?” (2006 July 31), the New Yorker. Retrieved on 2007 October 06. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/31/060731fa_fact - Detailed information about Wikipedia Tim O'Reilly (2005, September 30).

What Is Web 2.0. O'Reilly Network. Retrieved on 2007 October 06. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html - You can know more about Web 2.0 and it is very informative and readable too.

“Will Wikipedia Mean the End Of Traditional Encyclopedias?” (2006 September 12) , the Wall Street Journal (online). Retrieved on 2007 October 06. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115756239753455284.html - It includes interesting discussions about Wikipedia with traditional encyclopedias.

Tux, the penguin, mascot of the Linux kernel

The Cathedral and the Bazaar book cover

　

Why I'm Interested

“Power to the People” is one of John Lennon’s famous songs with implicit socialist ideas. Though this song refers to a political idea, it is related to main idea of this movement in digital world. Before that lecture, to be honest, I knew nothing about it, not to mention Linux and Linus Torvalds. But what really impressed me were the ideas of sharing resources and contributing as a virtual community. The idea is far from an idea one. Let me an analogy about the relationship between open source software and proprietary software, although it is a primitive one. It is just like sending telegraphic and e-mail messages. In the 19th century, people knew nothing about the coded message but relied on the professional to encode and decode. At the present, when you send and receive e-mails, you are given the power to control.

I know it can hardly compare with the analogy “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” by Eric Raymond, an open source software advocate. In his essay, the so-called Linux Law, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”, sounds colloquial, but it is insightful indeed. Also, his explanations of the hacker culture in the field of anthropology and economics are interesting.

Apart from the development of software, “Open Source Intelligence” (OS-INT), which Stalder and Hirsh (2002) defines as “the collaborative gathering and analysis of information”, is the area I want to further explore. When "You" was awarded Time Person of the Year 2006, it showed the growing importance and recognition of on-line collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the world, such as the “Web 2.0” services like Wikipedia, Youtube, and MySpace. In fact, we are more familiar with it even we might be confused by “Open Source Intelligence”.

Among these, I have particular interest in wikipedia. I am sure most of us have visited Wikipedia and even contributed. I remember about year ago I wrote an article on wikipedia too and it is still here, but slightly modified. It will be very interesting to compare wikipedia with Encyclopædia Britannica. Thus, it will be great fun to explore in detail.