So this was my first time using Odeo - it was cool but the sound is rather skippy for some reason - don’t know if that’s something to do with me or the site. Anyway, I recorded this in response to Hugh’s request for further opinions/ideas on the free movement.
You’re currently reading “response to free/open source software discussion,” an entry on Cherrier
hey cool - i think this is a really really important point, and it’s i guess it shows the importance of the connections between coders and the rest of the world.
open source software has definitely been the domain of uber geeks (& remains do) - but it has moved beyond that. two quick examples of tools even granny can use: firefox & wordpress. I think this has to do with critical mass too - the more people contributing to the movement, the more useful it becomes - because the building blocks are there to be used. if someone has done all the work to make GPL sofware only an uber-geek could love, then someone else can build on that to make it cuddly for all of use.
But maybe the point there is that wider world doesn’t really “get” open source, and the geeks don’t really care all that much about the wider world. so this is why tallking about it - seeing what we do have in common - might be an important thing.
thanks for this!
nice to hear what you have to say :-)
too bad it’s choppy.
I agree with you that it’s a problem for free software - but I know that it has helped us produce wifidog that is used by lots of people. and i’ve used it for open office because I didn’t have enough money to buy ms office.
did you have thoughts on how the free software, creative commons, open journals, open civic data, participatory culture, etc fit together?
[…] er hat into the ring
ella’s audiothougts on free/libre/open movement: response to free/open source software discu […]
Wow, that was mad choppy. Odeo needs to get their act together. But the concept is totally solid, Ella. I think an important aspect of these new Web 2.0 companies is that they are realizing the appeal of connecting to the average web user. Hopefully, companies and organizations will learn from this.
btw, Michael, what in the hells is FLOSS when it ’s at home?
hmm - i don’t understand the question?
Michael, you wrote FLOSS on your blog as an acronym. I don’t know what it means either.
& you said in your entry that I mostly talked about floss, and I was confused as I don’t know what the acronym FLOSS means & thus was unsure as to how I had managed to talk about it.
FLOSS = free libre open source software
a catch-all acronym.
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