I a m currently reading "Crowdsourcing" by Jeff Howe and want to come back to something I read very early on in his book. On page 54 Howe talks about open source and its meaning to computer software development. He states "The open source software movement has been as much about advancing a philosophy as it has been about developing software. Proponents of the open source model value transparency for its own sake, not simply because opening up the development process to outsiders happens to produce better code." He then proceeds to relate the terms to the human process of interaction by stating "put another way, a large and diverse labor pool will consistently come up with better solutions than the most talented, specialized work-force. This is as true in fields such as corporate science, product design, and content creation as it is in software, and it is one of the central principles of crowdsourcing."
Open source is not just a philosophy to be practiced in terms of transparency within software development. The point really is that People need to be the ultimate form of the open source philosophy. We must allow ourselves the opportunity to openly and honestly share our ideas and innovations in order to produce greater gains. Yes, there will always be times when intellectual property will need to be protected, but Eric S. Raymond is quoted in Howe's book to say "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". Michael Sampson said in his blog on Being Collaborative (Aug 15, 2008) "The fundamental precursor to collaboration is the recognition that another person has something to add, or something that they can withhold, that will contribute to the success or facilitate the failure of an initiative. If they do add their support, they can contribute to success. If they withhold their support, they can facilitate failure." By opening up our ideas to more eyes, all flaws become more obvious based on the group level of intelligence. We must always remind ourselves that people help people and WE>me.
1 comments:
the best way to draw on the wisdom of the crowd is to actively solicit feedback and impact from employees. We've had some of our best ideas and work come from our collaborative school leadership team.
Thanks for sharing the book from Howe. I'll look it up. You might like James Suriwicki's "The Wisdom of Crowds". It's a great read.
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