Bevil Wood­ing

It may not al­ways be ob­vi­ous, but the open source move­ment has been on a steady up­ward march. Glob­al­ly, open source ap­pli­ca­tions are be­com­ing a ma­jor fac­tor in all in­dus­tries from gov­ern­ments, health­care and ed­u­ca­tion to gam­ing and dis­as­ter re­lief. To­day, open source presents sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty for the de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal so­lu­tions, in­no­va­tion and in­dus­try.

Open source

The term open source gen­er­al­ly refers to any ma­te­r­i­al, such as soft­ware pro­grams or oth­er dig­i­tal con­tent that is made freely avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic for use or mod­i­fi­ca­tion from its orig­i­nal de­sign. For ex­am­ple, any­one can use, mod­i­fy or adapt the source code for the pop­u­lar An­droid op­er­at­ing sys­tem to cre­at­ing their own prod­ucts or ser­vices. The open source move­ment is based on a very dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal ap­proach com­pared to tra­di­tion­al in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty cre­ation mod­els where copy­rights and patents pre­vent oth­ers from ap­pro­pri­at­ing ideas with­out cost or penal­ty. Open source li­cens­es specif­i­cal­ly grants roy­al­ty-free, per­pet­u­al and non-ex­clu­sive us­age rights to the gen­er­al pub­lic.

Knowl­edge: The prin­ci­pal thing

While the open source vs pro­pri­etary IP de­bate will con­tin­ue, there is no ques­tion that open source pro­vides tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty for or­gan­i­sa­tions as well as end-users. At the most ba­sic lev­el, open source pro­vides users the world over with sig­nif­i­cant build­ing blocks for con­struct­ing com­plex in­for­ma­tion struc­tures and ser­vices. The open source ben­e­fit is not sim­ply an is­sue of costs, but of knowl­edge. The ex­plic­it ex­plo­ration, mod­i­fi­ca­tion and adop­tion of open source soft­ware can have very re­al and tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits for de­vel­op­ing ca­pac­i­ty in the lo­cal tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor. The prin­ci­ples of open­ness and col­lab­o­ra­tion that lie at the heart of the open source move­ment are of ma­jor rel­e­vance with­in a de­vel­op­ing so­ci­ety con­text.

Open source soft­ware projects have, to an over­whelm­ing de­gree, been the re­sult of col­lab­o­ra­tive in­puts of thou­sands of con­trib­u­tors in­clud­ing, for ex­am­ple pro­gram­mers, de­sign­ers and writ­ers from across the plan­et. This ap­proach al­lows na­tions which may on­ly have a frac­tion of the re­sources of large de­vel­oped and emerg­ing economies to tap in­to a set of skills and ex­pe­ri­ences that go way be­yond their lo­cal con­text and lo­cal pock­ets. For in­stance, open source ap­pli­ca­tions such as Ubun­tu, Ushahi­di and OpenOf­fice can have been suc­cess­ful­ly used to ad­vanced pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the pub­lic sec­tor, in schools and even in the pri­vate sec­tor. The move­ment pro­vides a door­way for the de­vel­op­ment and cus­tomi­sa­tion of lo­cal so­lu­tions for lo­cal needs. Prop­er­ly lever­ages, open source ap­proach­es can be an im­por­tant dri­ver of in­no­va­tion.

Be­yond soft­ware: Open ed­u­ca­tion

Re­cent­ly, the open source move­ment has been evolv­ing from its soft­ware-fo­cused roots broad­er open da­ta and open con­tent ini­tia­tives. Al­ready, mas­sive­ly open on­line cours­es (MOOCs) are be­com­ing the most pop­u­lar form of on­line ed­u­ca­tion. The emerg­ing lead­ers of this move­ment, in­clud­ing Web sites such as Udac­i­ty and Cours­era, of­fer free cours­es in sub­jects such as com­put­er sci­ence and sta­tis­tics, taught by ac­cred­it­ed lec­tur­ers. An­oth­er a new par­a­digm is be­gin­ning to emerge: open text­books. This new de­vel­op­ment is threat­en­ing to dis­rupt a US$4.5 bil­lion in­dus­try that has so far avoid­ed the me­dia up­heavals ex­pe­ri­enced in mu­sic, movies and trade pub­li­ca­tions. Open-source text­books are free for stu­dents to use and for pro­fes­sors to mod­i­fy.

More com­pa­nies are mov­ing to de­vel­op­ment them, and more class­rooms are adopt­ing them. The un­der­ly­ing ob­jec­tive, po­lit­i­cal­ly and so­cial­ly, is to light­en the bur­den for stu­dents who have been hit with tu­ition in­creas­es and ris­ing text book costs. This move­ment aligns well with the rise in free on­line cours­es, and it is poised to rev­o­lu­tionise the way we view, and pay for, ed­u­ca­tion. Busi­ness­es, ed­u­ca­tors, gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions and in­no­va­tors should be look­ing at the open source move­ment with fresh eyes. Seen in the right con­text, with the right sup­port and in­cen­tives, the open source move­ment can of­fer a new world of pos­si­bil­i­ty for build­ing the knowl­edge econ­o­my.

Ten open source soft­ware projects you should know about

1. An­droid OS

An­droid is a Lin­ux-based op­er­at­ing sys­tem for mo­bile de­vices such as smart­phones and tablet com­put­ers. It is de­vel­oped by the Open Hand­set Al­liance, led by Google.

2. Gnu­Cash

Gnu­Cash is a free ac­count­ing soft­ware sys­tem de­signed for per­son­al and small busi­ness use. It al­lows you to track bank ac­counts, stocks, in­come and ex­pens­es, in ad­di­tion to dou­ble-en­try ac­count­ing.

3. Google Chrome

Google Chrome OS is a Lin­ux-based op­er­at­ing sys­tem de­signed by Google to work ex­clu­sive­ly with web ap­pli­ca­tions.

4. Ma­gen­to

Ma­gen­to Com­mu­ni­ty Edi­tion is the world's fastest grow­ing e-com­merce plat­form. The En­ter­prise Edi­tion, for which there is an as­so­ci­at­ed cost, of­fers fea­tures like mul­ti-store ca­pa­bil­i­ty, store cred­its and gift cards, out-of-the-box.

5. MySQL

MySQL is the world's most used open source re­la­tion­al data­base man­age­ment sys­tem that runs as a serv­er pro­vid­ing mul­ti-user ac­cess to a num­ber of data­bas­es.

6. Open Of­fice

A pro­duc­tiv­i­ty soft­ware suite for cre­at­ing text doc­u­ments, spread­sheets, pre­sen­ta­tions and data­bas­es.

7. PDFCre­ator

PDFCre­ator is a cred­i­ble ri­val to Adobe Ac­ro­bat let­ting you cre­ate PDFs from prac­ti­cal­ly any ap­pli­ca­tion.

8. Ubun­tu

Ubun­tu is a free op­er­at­ing sys­tem for Lin­ux that's quick and easy to use. Re­cent fig­ures sug­gest that around 50 per cent of Lin­ux users have Ubun­tu in­stalled. With its fo­cus on us­abil­i­ty, Ubun­tu comes with OpenOf­fice, Fire­fox Em­pa­thy, Pid­gin, GIMP and oth­er tools pre-in­stalled.

9. Udac­i­ty

Udac­i­ty, with a stat­ed goal of de­moc­ra­tis­ing ed­u­ca­tion, of­fers a range of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion op­tions that are rec­og­nized by ma­jor tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies.

10. Ushahi­di

An open source project which al­lows users to crowd­source cri­sis in­for­ma­tion to be sent via mo­bile de­vices.

Bevil Wood­ing is the Founder and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, an ed­u­ca­tion-fo­cused not-for-prof­it de­liv­er­ing val­ues-based tech­nol­o­gy train­ing pro­grams in­clud­ing dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing and eBook cre­ation work­shops.

He is al­so Chief Knowl­edge Of­fi­cer of Con­gress WBN. Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing and Face­book: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing­Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing and Face­book: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing