What's the meaning of "Open Source" for the man in the street?

In the recent weeks I've been surprised by how I received related inputs, from different sources and their perspectives, about the same problem. For instance, two weeks ago, I read an interview by Simon Phipps about the future of OSI an I was hit by this passage: increasing consumer awareness of open source and the four freedoms (beyond the code and the geeks); Exactly the same day (cool) I was asked by a potential user about blueBill Mobile: I'm very interested if this [blueBill Mobile] becomes something like the Collins eGuide, it's because of that I haven't switched over to Android yet. The latter question was in response to my announcement of the next version of blueBill Mobile to start supporting multi-medial fact sheets in addition to the observation recording features. For the record, Collins is a reputable publisher in the world of ornithologists and sets a standard in field guides for learning about and identifying birds (I myself, as many other birdwatchers, have practiced also on the paper books published by Collins). The eGuide is the electronic version of their books, and there are a number of similar products for various platforms (iBird is one of the most popular, also thanks to the fact that it's featured on the Apple ads for the iPhone). This is an interesting question. This class of application needs two things: good computer technology and good reference data. For the former thing...

Date: June, 29 2010
Url: http://www.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici/archive/2010/06/29/what-open-source-means-man-street

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