Will Permaculture ever be as successful as FOSS?

Any of you who have spent more than ten minutes with me will know that FOSS is an acronym for Free and Open Source Software. I am an unashamed advocate for FOSS and even bring discussion of it to the Permaculture classroom.

At a recent Permaculture class it was suggested that the discussion of FOSS was “not really Permaculture” and only being presented because I was knowledgeable in the subject. This came as quite a shock. I could not understand how any Permaculture course could have a section on alternative economics without focussing on its most widespread and successful example.

So what is FOSS? To quote Wikipedia:

Open source software is software with its source code made freely available; end-users have various degrees of rights to modify and redistribute the software, as well as the right to use the software for commercial purposes. "Open source" as applied to culture defines a culture in which fixations are made generally available. Participants in such a culture are able to modify those products and redistribute them back into the community.

Sound familiar?

FOSS as a phenomenon started at a similar time to Permaculture, with a similar focus on principles and ethics. Both had visionary founders whose sheer dynamism kicked off a revolution in thinking. But what happened? FOSS now regularly appears on both the technology and business pages of major daily newspapers, shows up in newsagents with multiple magazines devoted to it, and is causing changes in the way major corporations do business, while Permaculture shows up as a segment on some gardening shows. Sure, there is more to it than this, but by any objective measure FOSS has come of age, while Permaculture is sulking in adolescence.

How successful is FOSS? Lets look at a few examples.

So, can Permaculture learn some lessons from FOSS? If Permaculture is true to its roots, then it must learn from FOSS, as its true strength is in synthesising the wisdom of other systems. And there is a lot that can be learned.

Let's start at the bottom. The barriers to entry. FOSS has an almost non-existent entry barrier. Provided you can get some time on a computer, you can contribute to FOSS. You don't need to have a proven track record, you don't need a degree, you don't need to speak the lingo, you just need to show a willingness to help yourself and in doing so help others.

And right from the start on, FOSS is above all inclusive. Nobody's opinion is more or less important than any other's. Everyone can have a say, everyone is empowered. The only things that are demanded of you that you spend the time learning about the community you are entering and that you respect others. And learning about the community is easy, as every FOSS project freely shares all of its information with whoever wants it.

The major strength of FOSS is in its openness. The Open part of the name is not just a buzzword, it is a mantra. Take a look at any FOSS project and you will find a wealth of information. You will also find records of discussions on direction of the project, its future, its past, on shortcomings, on how it compares to other projects, on every aspect. In FOSS we don't try to hide anything, including internal disputes. We know that dispute means passion and passion means progress. Everyone wins even if a project fractures. Linux, the poster child of the FOSS movement, originally started out as result of a dispute over the lack of openness of an earlier project.

Freedom is another cornerstone of FOSS. While many think this is in terms of freedom from cost this is only a minor side effect. The real freedom is in the freedom of choice, the freedom to use FOSS for your own needs without restraint, the freedom to modify it to your own requirements and the freedom to pass it on to others.

FOSS is very demanding. It demands that if you want to call your project FOSS, then you must agree to its ethics of openness and freedom. It even has legally binding licensing that enshrines your freedoms, rather than the traditional license that restricts your rights. But even there you have freedom. You can choose the license that best fits your needs.

“Think global, act local” is a catch cry of environmental groups, and of FOSS. It is rare to find a FOSS project that isn't global in reach, but worked on by small teams, or even individuals. As an example, one of the projects I work on is dotProject. This has a core team of just 5 people, three in three different Australian states, one in Portugal, and one in Germany. The support teams boast members from countries as diverse as United States of America, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, and many European nations. We have been translated into more than 2 dozen languages (and the list is growing). And we are only a small example, rating 2000th most active project out of over 100,000 on SourceForge, one of a number of enabling sites for FOSS projects.

While we are on the subject of numbers, here are a few more for you.

Our little project has 15,459 people who have taken the time to register on our website so that they can ask questions, or answer questions, or simply just provide their moral support to our project. These people have now posted more than 18,000 discussions. More than 250,000 people have downloaded dotProject to try it out. And all this for something that is a highly specialised application.

When we get into more mainstream applications, the numbers are truly startling.

FireFox the web browser has been downloaded more than 14 million times since its 1.0 release last year.

OpenOffice.org, a free replacement for MS Office, has been downloaded more than 57 million times.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. It would be next to impossible to list all of the FOSS projects, but below are some links to start you off.

Resources

1 comment

Comment from: Jo Tenner [Visitor]  
Jo Tenner

and UYDEC - the upper yarra and dandenongs environment counicl uses OSS - the new generation of open source is very easy to use and i recommend it widely because even i can use it!!

Good luck with your move - our region will be the poorer without you.

01/10/08 @ 01:05


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