Does the world care about open source?
I am a geek and I exist in the of technology. Because of this, I have been hearing the battle cries of open source evangelists for the last many years. I have even joined in with at different times. Even now, I am the proud owner of an “open source project”:http://teamdocs.fuzzylizard.com on “Javaforge”:http://www.javaforge.com/proj/summary.do?proj_id=331.
However, I have one simple question: does the rest of the world even care?
I think sometimes you need to take a step back and see how big or small a minority your group really is. Are we geeks really just a small, annoying group advocating the use of open source or is the greater public really aware of this particular argument? My guess is that the vast majority of everyday people know nothing about open source.
Part of this thinking comes from a post on “digg.com”:http://www.digg.com about how to get people to “switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org”:http://www.digg.com/linux_unix/The_transition_away_from_Microsoftness. The comes reflect my personal experience: you can’t. People know Microsoft Office. That is what they are used to. That is what everyone else uses. And they don’t see the problem with having to pay for the software.
On the other hand, trying to convince someone that office software can be free can be almost impossible. Trust me, I have tried. It took me several years and I am still not sure that the intended party really understands the concept. Actually, I am not sure that I understand the concept.
One interesting statement that was made in the digg.com discussion was that most people, when it comes to some of the stuff that runs on their computers, such as the operating system, they don’t even realize that there is an operating system. To the regular user, there are two kinds of computers in the world: a Windows computer, and a Mac computer. They don’t realize that they are buying hardware running an operating system, to them the OS is the computer.
Apply this idea a little further and it is easy to come to the conclusion that the battle over open source is only being fought by geeks and no one else really cares.
