Teddy Bloggie Blog Blogging

Check out Steven Weber's The Success of Open Source . It's pretty interesting reading on the abundance economy that's been created by internet techologies. It's about a 7 minute read though and at times heavy on the econ jargon - you've been forewarned.

I like open source. In fact, Movable Type, which we use to do these blogs, has a sort of open source community that'll help you out if you're in a jam. For example, I was trying to think of a way to rank blogs based on newest entry but I didn't know how to get started. Well, Kristine "kadyellebee" or other knowledgeable bloggers at Movable Type's support forum will usually help you out with these sort of problems. Try that with Microsoft or any other big vendor and all you'll get is the answer machine. Open source allows you to build your code using the freely available code that's been developed elsewhere. People are willing to share and sharing lowers the "cost" of accomplishing your piece of code. What do they get in return? Your gratitude AND the further dissemination of Movable Type, a positive externality. As more people use Movable Type and more people contribute to its code and broaden its features set, it'll increase the "value" of the software for each and every user - including the people who are making contributions. Free riding in this case is even a good thing because there's zero cost to copying a file and having a larger user base adds value to the product. Imagine being the sole user of any software product - what a nightmare that would be! Who would you turn to for questions? Who would upgrade it when it becomes obsolete? Open source can also work in other realms. MIT has started an open source site dedicated to publishing open source academic materials. I need to start an open source media site where people can add text, video, and music and have it freely distributed. That'd be great. Anyone know if that's already available?

By the way, here is the site if it were listed by most recent entry.