Chapter 10 – Closing Thoughts

Publisher Summary An open-source project breaks down organizational boundaries both within a company and between a company and the outside world. Open source results in software that better meets the needs of its users, both in terms of better fit and higher reliability. Competition and collaboration contribute to innovation and creativity in two distinct ways. Competition works through diversity and selection; collaboration works through refinement and improving. In a competitive atmosphere, each organization or entity tries to gain an advantage by producing things that are different from the others in ways thought to have advantage. In a collaborative situation, a competently designed artifact can be perfected through the application of many individual acts of improvement. Open source provides opportunities for both types of innovation and creativity. In open source, many of the activities are progressive and uncertain; they are formulated as needed and in response to local needs—of the module owners or of committers or others associated with small pieces of the software and sometimes of the users who, through their complaints and suggestions, are hoping to engage in participatory usability. This book recounts what has been learned over the past 15 years about open source, collaboration, creativity, innovation, and software development as it relates to commons-based collaboration. It is believed that open source can mature and expand to even more interesting projects and that the practice can be applied to more areas of design and building.