Part 7 c - last and conclusion
I'm going to try to treat each one of these four words in separated paragraphs: the community, the meaning, the elegance and the beauty.
[Community]
Here, I'm using the word 'community' to cover all individuals and organizations that participate in using, promoting or developing software, which is open source.
I want to bring the word 'community' to the argument because I like to see the idea around Freedom of Software or Open Source Code, as the balance position between a capitalism environment, which we live in, and the aspiration to good aspects of a social(ist) environment which brings more richer human interactions and thus can make human life better. For me, the quest is more around the achievement of balance and less of 'fight' against capitalist organizations. Not everyone within the open community share this 'fight' spirit, but the ones that actively promote it end up creating what in my point of view is an excessive aggression toward the perceived 'enemy'. And when this perceived 'enemy' is confused (mixed perception) with the capitalism itself, the end result misses the target and creates destructive 'collateral damage'.
This quest for this balance should, in my point of view, be one of the highest priority of the community at all times. Growth, quality of code and adoption will come as a natural result of the powerful forces that the balance can unleash.
The Freedom Software (I'm trying to avoid the word 'free' here) and Open Source Code has gained maturity in the last 10 years to understand this need for the balance, but still a lot of unnecessary confusion exist to justify a conscious effort to bring clarity to this point.
[Meaning]
By using the word 'meaning' I want to implicate the reasons that justify a particular project to use human and financial resources, so, the 'meaning' is the meaning that a particular project, or the whole open source movement, to implicate human attention and material resources. It could be meaning as a hobby and entertainment, it could be meaning as a public utility and it could be meaningful stuff for business usage.
I believe that the more it answers human needs the 'more meaning' it has. And the more complete it answers the challenges the more 'meaningful' it is.
A believe that, as of 2010, Freedom Soft/Open Code should be considering the economic challenges as a chance to express meaningful answers to individuals, public organizations and business so that they can have more choices to react to the challenges ahead. In my opinion, the Freedom Open Code has unique strengths that make it a good candidate to help to create "answers" for the current economic challenges. Part of this uniqueness is the human creativity that is represented in worldwide form.
[Elegance]
By 'elegance' I want to describe the beauty that is beyond and distinct from the visual beauty (the ones that pleasures the eye). I like to include such things as 'design elegance', 'intellectual elegance', 'interfacing in elegant way', 'elegant thinking', and so on.
An important elegant factor that I believe is necessary is the elegance of the architectural design of a platform, for example. Another important elegant factor that I think is good is the elegant way that all the infrastructure tools allow the human beings to interact amongst each other.
The 'elegance' I'm arguing here is the beauty to the mind, the beauty to the eyes and the beauty or practically in every day usage (the beauty it shows in our hands when performing its intended meaning). It is the balance of these three beauties.
[Beauty]
By using the word 'beauty' I like to describe the visually perception that a particular graphical user interface arises to the eye of the user, and how well it interact with him as use unfolds. The 'beauty' in this sense is more a visual aesthetic appearance.
This is the 'beauty' that I believe the MacOSX has from the beginning, and then the Vista tried to achieve later and now Ubuntu is trying to bring to Linux Desktop.
And then, to conclude this part I like to summarize the argument around three subjects:
a) Interactions between people.
c) User Interfaces (including graphical and non-graphical).
d) The "intellectual" beauty of the designed architecture.
So, to end this text I like to try three small paragraphs:
[1]
The growth of the freedom soft/open source movement (or any single project) is a function of how well the community can meaningfully interacts to achieve its purpose, and this human interaction is a function of the elegance of its architecture design and the elegance and beauty of its tools.
[2]
The growth of the freedom soft/open source can and should be greatly enhanced by putting effort in making user interfaces (graphics and non-graphics) that can be more elegant in operation, reaching a large audience than the current one.
[3]
The growth and sustainability of freedom soft/open source is in direct proportion to the quality of its meaning and how well it is serving the current human needs. The 'meaning' here is the quality of the balance of its relationship with capitalism and social aspirations.
For me, an elegant and productive interaction between human beings working towards meaningful objectives "IS THE WAY" to create high quality code and achieve evolved software innovation, which can be achieved by no other way. And, that productive relationship with capitalism AND social aspirations are possible together, as long as we want to and as long as we put effort in materializing it, and that this balance "IS THE WAY" to create healthy and sustainable freedom/open projects that can fully implement its potential.
And, that the economic challenges that we live today provides not only the challenge and the opportunity for the freedom/open to prove its value but further, the chance to transition to a new "computing" paradigm (as I'm trying to describe in theses texts) represents the opportunity to embrace fully the 'meaning', 'elegance' and 'beauty' in the freedom/open movement as the engine motor for its growth, not as an accessory.
I hope that these small pieces of texts help to capture, at least in surface, the opinion I want to express, so that its information helps to create some kind of motivation for everybody in the Knoppix community, and by doing that helps Knoppix to be one of the first to "jump" to the "what's next" stage. I believe that the current MicroKnoppix already has the 'thing' in its present dna, and by expressing (or at least trying) my vision about this "next" stuff, I hope to create the awareness (perhaps it already exist) of this fact so that Knoppix can fully capture the opportunity that is within its current potential.
[The part seven]
To conclude the part 7 I like to stress the point (and this is my point of view) that alone, neither a good architectural design nor good and powerful tools can achieve enduring success. The reason is basically that alone, or even both together don't represent a full platform. In my opinion the true nature of a platform is achieved when a good (architectural) design meets good tools and they meet people, attracted by the elegance, the meaning and the beauty of them all together.
One personal way that I think of 'meaning' is to think of the 99% group of users that is not the most technical ones, and to put some effort in the direction of helping them to take part of the rich benefits that Freedom Open Source can create (for them). In the direction of this 'meaning', I believe, there is huge opportunity to unleash (more) power within the platform of Freedom Open Source.
[The whole topic - thread]
I want to say thanks all and apologize for what started as a tentative of dialog ends up me writing alone. Well, not so bad, I was able to produce a short but informative piece about a vision for a possible future of FOSS in general and Knoppix in particular as well. At the end, I'm happy with what I did here; it helps me put the whole thing in perspective inside my mind too, and in fact, while writing these pieces, three or so weeks ago that I believe all the stuff inside my mind, they together achieved a form o coherence (that was the insight moment).
I hope these picts and texts help you to find (further) inspirations inside this whole new page on information technologies...
Valter