"What is open source?"

I was on the Novell campus a few weeks ago attending the Utah Open Source Conference. One of the days I went to the Novell cafeteria for lunch. While I was filling my plate with food, a young man next to me asked, "So do you work here?". I replied with "No, I'm here attending the open source conference." A few seconds later I was hit with a question that I was not prepared to answer.

"What is open source?" he asked. I was speechless. Did he just ask me what open source was? Is he joking? Nope, he looks pretty serious. Ahh, well then where to start? I only have a few seconds to explain it to him. I managed to come up with a horribly composed answer, and followed it up with "You know, like Firefox and Linux." He nodded and walked away.

Now that I have had more time to think about this, I want to come up with a better explanation of what open source software is. That way I will be prepared for the next time this sort of thing happens. This definition needs to be short and easily understood by people of all backgrounds, including your grandmother. Here is what I have come up with so far:
Open source software is software where the code is publicly available and people from all over the world work together to create free software.
Not the best it could be, but much better than the definition I gave the young man in the Novell cafeteria. I am writing another post that will help people understand why people create free software.

Now before people start jumping to conclusions, there is no way to determine if this person was a Novell employee or not. I have been told that the cafeteria is open to the public, so he could have been there simply for the food. In Novell's defense, they really are a good friend to open source. Yes, they make mistakes, but we are all human. The most recent example of Novell's commitment to open source is the leadership that Novell has taken regarding the new open source ATI drivers.

Comments

  1. silwol9/24/2007 6:10 AM

    Great post! I frequently get confronted with that question, and I usually also have to explain what code (or source code) is, because people that don't develop software usually don't understand. I tell people that they have the right and the ability, skills assumed, to change the software. They don't need to rely on some software developer getting it right, but instead there are thousands of developers, and usually there are some among them who get it right.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous9/24/2007 9:15 AM

    I'm afraid you have to start a little farther up the line - "What the heck is code, anyway?" And "free software" sounds like "beer", not like "speech".
    The first problem is that mere mortals don't even know there's two versions of software (one human-readable, the other machine-readable [think .c vs .exe]), so they can't possibly grasp the full meaning of closed source (where decompilation is prohibited) (hence they associate free with beer).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dread Knight9/24/2007 9:39 AM

    Hehe, you got pawned! xD

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous9/24/2007 10:20 AM

    It would be good to explain open-source in a more technically correct way if you have time for a discussion. Otherwise, for lay-people, you probably came pretty close to a good answer. I'd be tempted to add that it's a method by which secure software and cryptographic systems are often made -- imagine life without Windows Viruses and Spyware.

    ReplyDelete

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