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Part of a community or just a costumer...

When I see how FLOSS and closed source companies treat the people who use their products or develop for them, the difference couldn't bigger or more striking.

While on closed source projects costumers and developers tend to be seen just as an working relationship, on FLOSS there is a sense of being part of a community that works together as such.

Closed source project are closely guarded to avoid giving away any control of what happens behind the user side. This means that the users don't have any say on what goes on there, and are dependent on whatever the people who run the project choose to do with the software.

On the developer side of business, they are just allowed access to what the project managers believe the developers should have. This means that developers are also tied to whatever to what the project owners want the to do, or how they believe things should work without any outside feedback.

On FLOSS projects, both users and developers can have a say on every aspect of the development process and the direction of where the project should go. It truly becomes a community effort, since everyone that can add something of value to the project can actually do so.

Closed source projects want to retain as much control as possible on as few possible hands, with centralized decision making process. All decisions of where and how changes are made, and where the software is being taken, are made by a the core management.

FLOSS projects are much different. The community around the project has a bigger share on the on how the project is run, and what changes or additions are made. The management is responsible of the final decision, but the community has the chance to give a lot of feedback on what the decision should be or how it should look.

At the end FLOSS is a lot more inclusive of the community of users and developers that builds around the projects built as FLOSS. On the closed source project, the relationship is a lot more rigid. Users and developers are just to consume what the project leaders thing they should.

Personally, I just don't like being forced to use something just because I'm told to do so.

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