Open Source Goals

(I am sorry if I offend anyone in this post, but my interactions have caused me to think about this.)

I have a group project going on right now. It is in my Strange Communities class, and we must document the way in which a group we know about has changed its goals as it has developed. But that is not the interesting part.

What gets me is that I have no real idea how to communicate with anyone. Beyond just trying to decided if we use Facebook, HCOL, or some other means of messaging is crazy hard. But I think it is only hard because we all come from different backgrounds. Some of the people are regular Facebookers so that is the place to meet... once we are all friends there. I use HCOL because it was the one place where I could find everyone's names and send them messages at one point in time. I am also a fan of using on-line word processors in order to send messages and to write our paper. There are others who seem to be adverse to any of those because they are not connected more than they have to be (very strange).

But the hardest part of communicating with people I think comes in what we see the project as. For some it is just another task to take care of to get done with the class. Others it is a chance to flex our thinking caps. And even others see it as something that doesn't require any thought at all. This means that delegating work will probably cause some to have lighter loads than others even if we all receive the same grade. While I have gotten use to this over the years, I am still troubled by the way that we all wish to take separate paths to our primary goal.

But this is the way open source works. Right? Everyone does a small amount to make something big? This is why without paying many people very much money some versions of Linux are worth more than $10 million. But those projects, even ignoring the idea of motivation, have something I don't. They have time.

A good open source project requires time to really get off the ground. Just look at Songbird. As an open source music player it has been in development for close to three years, and it is just now getting to a usable beta. If I had the time to work with my group and let everyone do a little at a time I would probably be able to produce something really great. Instead I have a little less than a month to put something together that I can only hope is interesting.