In The Rise of Crowdsourcing, Jeff Howe looks at outsourcing in comparison to web 2.0 and other collaborative online communities:

“Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D.” (Wired)

People are increasingly looking to online communities to accomplish tasks more efficiently, more quickly, with higher quality and lower in cost than more traditional solutions. Howe has a number of examples of this phenomenon. First, the high priced stock photography market is being cannibalized by companies like iStockphoto that collect images shot by amateur contributors that can be sold at a much lower price. Second, media channels like VH1 and Bravo are looking to the web for funny and outrageous viral videos already becoming popular with their audience and putting them on television. Third, and most interesting to me, companies are using the internet to facilitate innovations and R&D for complex problems, like how to put fluoride into toothpaste tubes without getting the fluoride in the air.

This is not a new phenomenon. Open source projects have been doing this for years. Within the open source community, people work together online to create very complex products, everything from the Linux kernel to open source databases to open source web browsers. Creating complex products requires quite a bit of innovation, and communities have a unique opportunity to focus on innovations that are created by users or that build on the ideas of other people as discussed in Democratizing Innovation by Eric von Hippel. Firefox extensions and themes are a great example of user innovations shared within the community of Firefox developers and users. Like anything else, the quality of open source products can vary; however, many of these open source projects are of a very high quality partly due to what Eric Raymond called Linus’s Law: “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”

Although “crowdsourcing” has existed in the open source community for years, the difference now is that the technology has evolved to allow anyone to participate in these communities. Fifteen years ago, you almost needed a computer science degree just to use open source products, not to mention actually contributing to them. With the web 2.0 technology of today, even those with minimal computer skills can join and become active participants in online communities to contribute thoughts and ideas via blogs, photography via Flickr and iStockphoto, and maybe even solve a complex R&D problem for a major company. “Crowdsourcing”, while not a new idea, is now becoming a mainstream phenomenon.

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Nicholas Carr has pronounced the death of Wikipedia:

“Wikipedia is dead. It died the way the pure products of idealism always do, slowly and quietly and largely in secret, through the corrosive process of compromise.

There was a time when, indeed, anyone could edit anything on Wikipedia.

… A few months ago, in the wake of controversies about the quality and reliability of the free encyclopedia’s content, the Wikipedian powers-that-be – its ‘administrators’ – abandoned the work’s founding ideal and began to impose restrictions on editing. In addition to banning some contributors from the site, the administrators adopted an ‘official policy’ of what they called, in good Orwellian fashion, ‘semi-protection’ to prevent ‘vandals’ (also known as people) from messing with their open encyclopedia.” (Rough Type)

I must respectfully disagree with Nicholas. This is not the death of Wikipedia; it is the natural evolution of the online encyclopedia. In a sense, evolution is like death. The original species becomes extinct and is replaced by one that is better adapted to the current environment. In human evolution, previous species like Homo habilis and Homo erectus became extinct leading up to the evolution of modern Homo sapiens.

The open source community can be used as an example of how to make online communities function smoothly to produce a high quality product. We can certainly argue that Linux and other open source applications are high quality products that are created by a collection of people online, similar to Wikipedia. However, open source projects rarely (if ever) give access to the source code to anyone who wants to contribute. A smaller group of people have access to commit changes, while newer and less experienced members must submit code to others who review it and make the changes (or not) based on the merits of the contribution. These are commonly accepted practices that have been proven to work over time within open source communities.

As Wikipedia evolves, it is adopting practices that are similar to those used by open source communities. Unregistered users and very new users are not given full access to edit any article; however, after a few days they can earn the right to make changes. Those that abuse the privilege to edit articles by vandalizing pages will no longer be allowed to make changes. This seems like common sense, especially when compared to the commonly accepted practices of open source communities. These practices help to prevent controversial entries from being edited with incorrect or incomplete information in order to protect the integrity of the information in Wikipedia and to preserve the notion that Wikipedia is a reliable and credible source of information.

Most of us would never have an opportunity to contribute to a traditional encyclopedia, so Wikipedia is still very open when compared to other alternatives. In an ideal, utopian world where people always do the right thing, maybe we could have complete openness without restriction. These changes do not mean that Wikipedia is no longer “open”. Wikipedia has simply evolved as an online community in order to maintain its survival.

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Someday I will rule you all.

This has nothing to do with open source software, but I had to get a little geeky. I am also exposing my ham radio past, which I have not actually used in maybe 20 years.

The Canadians love Firefox. According to OneStat.com, Firefox currently has a 16% market share in Canada compared to an 11.8% Firefox market share worldwide. As a frame of reference, Internet Explorer usage in Canada is only 77.4% compared to IE’s 85.2% market share worldwide. In the US, Firefox has a 12.8% market share, while IE is at 82.5%.

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While the rest of us are talking about how and when Sun may open source Java, the Open Source Diva, Danese Cooper, has a slightly different take on the topic. From Danese’s perspective, we should be following Harmony, a J2SE Apache project:

” So…I’m wondering how long it will take the various Linux distros to figure out that they can ship Harmony (as they ship Apache) pre-installed and ready to use (even while they continue to put Sun’s JRE in the “non-free” directory, where its still two clicks away from users).” (DivaBlog)

The Mellon Foundation will for the first time “recognize not-for-profit organizations that are making substantial contributions of their own resources toward the development of open source software and the fostering of collaborative communities to sustain open source development.” (Mellon.org) Multiple awards will be given at each level: $25,000 and $100,000 depending on the significance and benefits of the project.

“To nominate an organization for an award, please click here. Each nomination must address one organization and one software project. You may nominate more than one organization, or nominate the same organization for more than one project, but each organization/project pairing must be a separate nomination. You may nominate your own organization or project.” (Mellon.org)

This is a great way to recognize an open source project!

People are now using open source methodologies and collaborative approaches to create new religions that often focus on working together to create a belief system rather than receiving instruction from a small inner circle of leaders. Examples include Yoism, the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn, and the open source theology movement.

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As anticipated, Oracle announced yesterday that they will release some Ajax user interface technology into the open source community.

“Oracle said it would donate a set of Ajax-enabled user-interface components in the next few months. The Redwood Shores, Calif., database company said developers would be able to assemble the reusable components on a page and connect them to an application data source. The company has integrated Ajax with JavaServer Faces technology to build highly interactive user interfaces that run 100 percent within a browser with no downloads, officials said.” (TechWeb)

This is not a big announcement, but it does support Oracle’s recent focus on open source. From my perspective, open sourcing existing technology is a better open source strategy for Oracle than the acquisition strategy that it has been rumored to have been pursuing.

At JavaOne today, Sun announced that they will open source Java. They have not yet released a timeframe because they still need to figure out exactly how they will open source it and resolve a few issues first. This is a positive step in the right direction for Sun.

I have discussed the difficulties of getting wide adoption for Linux on the desktop in quite a few blog entries (here and here). In short, we have a chicken and the egg problem: there are not enough Linux desktop users for application vendors to justify the port to Linux on the desktop; however, users are not willing to move to desktop Linux until it supports the applications they require. I have also talked about the lack of vendor driver support that would allow users to plug and play with any device they happen to buy at the local electronics store (scanners, printers, digital cameras, MP3 players, etc.) The human tendency to resist change is another factor slowing the growth of the Linux desktop.

Yesterday, a Wall Street Journal reporter, Mark Golden, discussed his experiences with installing and using desktop Linux on his Pentium III Sony Vaio. He tested six distributions: Linspire, Fedora, Suse, Xandros, Mandrake, and Knoppix. His findings are not surprising. Printing, email, surfing the web worked well, but getting sound and graphics cards to work (drivers) along with multi-media applications and iPod / digital camera operations did not work properly. As I have said many times before, until we get the applications and drivers for desktop Linux in good shape with plug and play capability for consumer devices, ordinary users will continue to struggle and ultimately will not use Linux on the desktop.

Golden also struggled with OpenOffice.org due to his use of complicated Microsoft Office documents that could not be properly converted. Most of us, meaning ordinary office workers, can easily convert documents back and forth between Microsoft Office formats and OpenOffice.org formats; however, people using some of the more complex features of either application will find conversion between formats difficult.

The blogosphere has a number of opinions on Mark Golden’s experiences. For example, Scott Granneman of theopensourceweblog thinks that Golden should have tried Kubuntu instead of the six that he originally evaluated, and Ed Caggiani of Life in the Valley thinks that Linux should be used where it performs well: on the back end running servers.

I still think that Linux on the desktop could be a great solution for some people if we can just get over the application, driver, and plug-n-play issues.