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#What Open Source Means To Me

An experiment to see if we can get a bunch of people to send pull requests about what open source means to them. See CONTRIBUTING for the expected format.

###Nick Desaulniers Open source means standing on the shoulders of giants, allowing humanity to accelerate the pace of technological achievement collectively, instead of wasting time starting from square one repeatedly. Open source allows us to examine, learn from, and understand how the software we use everyday works, and how we can write better software ourselves. Open source allows us to create a community around users and contributors. The opportunity of contribution is allowed from any and all instead of exclusive rings of those employed by any one organization.

Open source means that I have a computer with amazing software on it that's available for free. I do almost all my work using Linux, Python, Ruby, Perl, GNU tools. It means we have Wikipedia. I literally can't imagine a world without open source software.

I also think about my experiences contributing to open source software, which have been alternately amazing and super stressful. I've spent time in IRC channels where people answer my questions within minutes and take me seriously, and in channels where I've been mocked for not knowing things.

I think of open source communities as places that are useful and productive and supportive also as places where people can be rude and exclusionary and awful. Building good communities isn't easy work, and open source isn't magical. We can do so well and so badly.

###Pablo Terradillos El Open Source es importante para mí, porque me permite abrirme a un mundo mucho más amplio. Aprender de los gigantes, poniendome a la par de los mismos en forma de pequeñas contribuciones. El Open Source significa poner el avance primero. Permitiendo que cualquier persona pueda contribuir, en vez de competir. El Open Source permite crear comunidades, lazos, permite que un completo desconocido ayude a otro. Que la necesidad de uno, se convierta en el beneficio de todos.

###Gervase Markham Open source is important because it's part of what we need to make sure that as more and more people across the world come online, they can do so while being in control of their own technology, and without having to pay gatekeepers.

God has a project to bless and transform the world through the work of his people, until the earth is filled with his glory. Open source is important to me because it's one of the ways I can contribute to that project, using the particular skills He has given me.