WordPress Wins
Matt posts Best Open Source Social Networking awarded to WordPress by Packt Publishing. Wtg!
Check out the numbers in A Hollow Victory Microsoft which says “the fact is that open source has won this battle”. There’s a lot of spin in this post, which refers only to web hosting software, rather than the OS upon which Microsoft’s empire is built, but the basis is real. Unix and Apache are increasingly adopted by enterprise developers because they work, and new development growth continues to be increasingly based on open source vs Windows.
Open source isn’t about free. It’s about self sufficiency and community. It is about building things for ourselves instead of serving a master.
The anonymous WordPress blog to which I linked above, called There Is No Government Like No Government, claims to be about anarchy, yet is rich with the political cant of the extreme left, with an occasional right wing position thrown in. Does anyone other than me find this ironically amusing?
There’s a hidden chasm in many a segment of open source communities which is tied to political agendas (qu’elle surprise). Many community members bristle at big business, and many corporations deserve it, exhibiting intent to capitalize on free software, as they do on the free content millions of individuals create on the web every day. Open source community members are far more likely to be on the political left than the right. Nevertheless there is a core of practitioners of true free enterprise, which is apolitical. Here new economic models are needed, and here casting aside canned political agendas can make a great difference for all of us.
Open source developers who are apolitical shouldn’t worry about capitalistic opportunism, other than in the aspect in which it gains baseless dominance through big government support, regardless of which party is in power. The fact that open source has the momentum it does, is based on achievement and performance, not politics. Keep that thought.
November 8th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Good post overall.
I would say open source is also about art, and the artists — programmers — enjoy to display their talents. Programmers get to practice their craft in public and get better at it. There may be little money in open source per-se, but not in talent, that always gets paid. From that perspective, open source IS about community, but I don’t know about self-sufficiency. By its very nature, open source requires an interlocking community and ideas don’t happen in a vacuum.
Per my linked post in particular, I was picking on a governing body’s inability to distinguish between very basic concepts: servers and PCs to cast some doubt on their ability to decide on such matters. The topic was left a big hanging, so I may return with a follow-up. Basically, if open source is about merit, IT should not need a government to carve up their competition for them. Otherwise, I see closed-source/paid software and free-open-source as complementary, each with their own functions.
As for my blog being about anarchy, it is. It doesn’t fit well into either the left or right wing, so take it as it is
November 8th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Thanks, Adi.
It is exactly your point about self-sufficiency which I personally believe needs more practical attention. Developing more community channels through which individuals as well as our whole can manage economic realities more fully is something that, from what I see, could benefit from new ideas and energy. When someone like Matt creates a way for open source devs to generate income, I’m reminded of how few are doing this. My statements about political agendas are based on my belief that these often get in the way of a healthy community and economy.
I’ve enjoyed more than one post on your blog, and discovering that you are aware of how difficult it is to say anything without a political interpretation is a plus. Finding seemingly contradictory postions (according to the partisan norm) is one of the reasons I kept reading, since it indicated the possibility of an author giving a personal opinion based on some independent thought. That’s usually more important to me than whether or not I agree with the opinions expressed. It also tends to go hand in hand with respect for the opinions of others.
Fitting into neither the left nor the right wing stereotype happens to be a state of affairs I am familiar with.
I’m too much about responsibility to embrace anarchy personally …my version of your great title might be ‘There Is No Government Like Self Government’.
November 20th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
I’m not sure where to post this tbh
. I know people are real edgy with all the blog spam etc. I use to run a blog myself, so I’m aware of the work you actually do to keep this up 
. Anyway point is I thought I’d try and put something back into the community so I’ve written a little plugin folks might like. You can find it if you click through to my website. If you don’t like it just delete this comment. Thanks for your time.
March 27th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I find the notion of relating open source of any kind to a political stance kind of interesting, even if I am not quite convinced the two are related.
Open Source is big business and far from being free, let’s be honest, Matt at WP and Brad from Joomla makes a good living on their free work.
Open Source on both a free and commercial basis in the form of design elements and plugins and extensions and of course a responsive and convicted community does not hurt either.
September 22nd, 2008 at 9:26 am
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September 23rd, 2008 at 5:51 pm
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September 26th, 2008 at 9:34 am
we use joomla, it is a wonderful open source software
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