As I was watching Cosmos last night, somehow I realized how similar the scientific and FLOSS communities are in many respects.
Both communities do they strive on individuals working together, in an open way that promotes sharing information and testing ideas before they become accepted as facts. People test each others ideas, and put them to work when they prove their value.
Even though most of the time they work in parallel to each other, they do have points where each other interact. Where one provides with tools, or ideas, that allows the other work toward their objectives a lot more efficiently.
Though FLOSS owes its existence to the science, since without the discoveries made by the scientific communities the FLOSS community wouldn't have much to work on, FLOSS does pay back that debt by giving back tool that allow science to move forward. Both help each other grow and move forward, it could be said that both communities live in a symbiotic relationship.
What's more impressive, at least for me, is that it's far more common that I ever imagine to find scientist that work on FLOSS project in order to advance science. Some because they needed to create the tools they needed for their research, or because they knew how to code and found a FLOSS project they wanted to contribute to.
Other thing, is that you don't have to be a scientist to contribute to the advancement of science. If you know how to code, you can join any FLOSS project you like that helps develop the tools that scientists need for their research.
Both communities are about people together, the scientific community to find out how the cosmos works and the FLOSS community around finding the best solution for a task. Even if the end of each community is different, the core values of their members are the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment