Open Source--Does it matter?

First--what is open source software? One of the best definitions I've heard was from my colleague Andrew Clarke, with whom I worked with introducing open source software to the United Church of Canada. At a presentation, he put out two plates of cookies, one President's Choice, and one made by his mother. Beside the plate made by his mother was a sheet detailing the complete recipe. How his mother's cookies were made, he would say, is "open",  in the same way open source software is open (the code and construction of the application is transparent), while of course President's Choice would never disclose their own cookie recipes.

The "open" of open source software means that anyone can obtain the recipe, and contribute to making it better.  For some software, like the "Drupal" software I'm using to put content on this website, a large community of volunteers excited about the possibilities of the software, and just loving to write software, or better learn how to write software, starts improving it, and it goes through various versions, getting more useful with more features. Even non-technical people contribute, writing manuals, and doing testing and design work. The economy of open source software then is like a pot luck supper-- a "gift economy" wherein something is created out of what is freely given.

That the Internet largely runs on open source software and that international Internet-based volunteer communities are creating amazing resources like Wikipedia seems to me to be a miracle, a testimony to human virtue, at a time when such examples can be rare and clouded by our stressed-filled modern lives. But even supporting this incredible movement is not enough for most people to decide, for example, what tools  they use to build their websites. When I am introducing these ideas to our NGO sector clients, I can see folks' eyes start glazing over. Technology is dense enough. To add this remote theoretical layer is confusing. Just give me something that works. Even the  Fair Trade movement has a more tangible argument to make, based on realities like labour conditions. Plus, just because something comes from a community of practioners, supposedly not motivated just by greed, while appealing to an old-fashioned lefty sensibility which values collective change against individual gain, does not necessarily make it better software. I think Microsoft Word is better than (open source) OpenOffice. I prefer Mac OS X to open source Linux on my desktop. 

Microsoft tried to bully itself to a position in the technology sector whereby competing solutions had difficulty getting attention, or would get swallowed by the Microsoft beast. I am very glad the (open source) Firefox browser is available, and that Web Networks' hosting servers (running open source applications) have been operating getting on to years now without downtime. All things being equal, I'd go open source because of its value system. And, as the Internet blossoms strange and interesting fruit in the areas of learning and collaboration, it seems that the gift economy model (like the one we call "creation") is able to put out more and more interesting and useful tools and resources, showing  the strength of those old hippy communal values.