The Mercury News: Open-source Movement Fueled by Community Spirit
Jul 25, 2002, 11:00 (5 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Dan Gillmor)
"It was as if the town's smile had lost a tooth when the church
in the center of tiny Lincoln, Vt., burned down in the early 1980s.
But townspeople found the money and resolve to move an abandoned
church up the road to the site.
"I was living in Lincoln at the time. I'll always remember the
spirit that drove people, whether church-goers or not, to volunteer
time and dollars to solve a problem that was affecting the
community--and I'll especially remember the pride we all felt one
summer day as we watched the replacement church being trundled down
the country road to its new foundation.
"That spirit, it seems to me, is part of what fuels the
open-source software movement and its close relative, free
software. With open source, the programming instructions (source
code) are openly available for anyone to use and modify, with the
general proviso that improvements are returned to the overall
community..."
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