Open Source Evolution

Open source and the philosophy driving it, has not stopped evolving. From Sendmail, arguably the earliest and most prolifically used open source (25 years old this year), to the explosion of open source usage in the late nineties, open source has now been used by companies to not only publicise themselves, but to gain expertise and knowledge from the OS community. Now with the web 2.0 revolution (an evolution of open source), we now have companies like google and yahoo providing free API’s for developers to create their own mashup projects. Companies have been using he development community, but not with a blaze of publicity. Disney put on their game engine for their Pirates of the Carribean console game, and Toontown, in the open source community, with great success. They recognised the value of external peer review, and the goodwill that is gained by contributing to the worldwide development community.

Open source

Vodafone’s Betavine site takes this concept beyond the web companies, and into the mobile space. Their site is satisfyingly accessible and flourishing with innovation. Programming has come a long way since the ethos of Microsoft in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Code is no longer regarded as unique in itself, what is unique is in it’s application, in it’s ability to communicate and integrate with other code. Usability of the site itself is good, and there is already a large community of developers, thanks to a long-running beta project site. As with any open source, you take it with the assumption of possible risk - but true innovation is always the result of a risk.

Go Play!