Mark Rochefort

Those who know me will undoubtedly have at some point had the pleasure of listening to me ranting on about the power of the open source movement – or, more generally, social collaboration online. On the bus yesterday I read an editorial piece – “Collaboration is the new revolution” – in the Guardian newspaper that certainly struck a few chords. Here’s a few extracts, by way of a summary:

1) Open source paves the way for the odd utopian dream:

Sir Thomas More’s description of Utopia as a place where “nobody owns anything, but everyone is rich” is not a bad way to describe the open source movement in which people around the world collaborate with each other to produce services that anyone can use – or improve on – for nothing.

2) Open source is recession proof:

One of the interesting things about the collaborative movement is that it is probably recession-proof, though you won’t see it in economic statistics because it mostly does not involve cash transactions.

3) Open source is robust and well-trusted by large successful organisations:

Big corporations, such as IBM, Google and Amazon, are devourers of open source software because they find it cheap, efficient, low-maintenance and reliable. But UK government departments, including health and the foreign office, have proved risk-averse with hardly any open source in their infrastructure.

4) Open source is socialism (well, social collaboration at least):

…open source combines the cooperative spirit that was at the heart of the Labour party in the past with the entrepreneurial skills needed today.

And with nothing more to add to that summary, I’m off to join the revolution (well, okay, I’m off down the pub to carry on ranting to anyone who’s too polite to stop me).