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Author	Topic: Why do you participate in OS projects?	11987 views

Kerstin

Core Development Team
12 posts

Why do you participate in OS projects?

10 November 2008 at 12:23pm

Hello,
I would be interested in discussing a very general question with you... why do people, i.e. why do you participate in open source development?
I've been thinking a lot about this question and a variety of answers can be found, but still I would like to hear your personal answer.
Why would I participate? Mainly because I enjoy it and it's a lot of fun :)
Cheers
Kerstin
Liam

Community Member
2 posts

Re: Why do you participate in OS projects?

11 November 2008 at 3:41am

Hi Kerstin,
Why do i participate in opensource development ?
About 4 months ago a friend of mine and i started up the opensourcescooter project. Our aim for this project is to create an electric scooter that will be used by people all around the world as there mode of transport for daily comuting. The scooter will hopefully provide people with a cheap clean form of transport that will have minimal impact on the environment.
By useing the opensource concept we can design the scooter with the involvement of people from a variety of backgrounds and professions, it also provides us with a variety of perspectives for the needs of people from different cultures. One of the big reasons we are designing the scooter to be modular is so it can accomodate the needs of people from all these different backgrounds.
Why participate in opensource projects? Our goal is sustainabilty and opensourcing the design provides a platform thats allows us and indivuals around the world to help make a big impact.
liam
liam@opensourcescooter.com
www.opensourcescooter.com
Marty

Community Member
4 posts

Re: Why do you participate in OS projects?

24 January 2009 at 7:14pm

Hi Kerstin,
good question!
Through hard and sometimes frustrating experience (not so much @ university, more in various jobs) I have come to the conclusion, that innovation has a...well...inferior standing.
What you always have are worriers, you know?
What is zillions of times easier to achieve are small incremental improvements, which you get for free by a community:
In my area of business, that means correcting a typo here, finding a better formulation there, getting a better graphic from another project.
If you understand what I mean, you can keep it ;-)
Sunny

Community Member
1 posts

Re: Why do you participate in OS projects?

29 May 2010 at 9:37am

Hi Kerstin,
Great question! For me it was the only feasible way for myself and a small group of people to do a project such as this. We are designing a very simple water filter but more than that we are implementing it in villages on the ground in SE Asia. There is too much work for a few people to do by themselves and there are lots of people really excited by our project but they are in other countries. Open source offered a natural solution to allow people from around the World to contribute to the project. Our project can be found at http://abundantwater.org if you are curious.
Cheers,
Sunny