How long have you been interested in open source?

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Opensource.com

The opensouce.com community is growing fast, and we're trying to figure out who we are and what we care about. The more we know about ourselves, the more relevant our content and discussions will be.

These polls aren't scientific, but they will give us a useful snapshot of of our growing community, so we can plan better for the future.

Feel free to tell us more about you in the comments.

11 votes tallied
Forever, since before it was called “open source”
9% (1 vote)
20+ years
9% (1 vote)
15-20 years
9% (1 vote)
10-15 years
27% (3 votes)
5-10 years
27% (3 votes)
1-5 years
9% (1 vote)
Less than a year
9% (1 vote)

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5 Comments

The term "Open Source" seems to have been coined in 1998, making some of your choices redundant.
http://www.opensource.org/history

@mike, we're experts in the open source way, not math ;)

Thanks for voting.
Jason

how you define open source.

There are the principles and practices, which are very old....and then there is the term which is fairly new.

The first category really just means "always" or "forever."

Re: The term "Open Source" seems to have been coined in 1998, making some of your choices redundant.

The poll didn't say "Open Source" it said open source. This means source code which is not closed to inspection. The FSF and BSD movements were very much for open source code even if they predate the "Open Source" branding.

While by no description of the term could I be called an "expert", programming and editing has been my favorite pastime since the mid-'70s. And I have never believed that what I built should be "closed" off from someone else desiring to make any of my projects their own.

I do understand and appreciate the Microsoft's of the world, and I use many of their endeavors in my daily life. But for real satisfaction, open source projects win me over every time I get a chance to use a project that meets or even exceeds the usability of its commercial counterparts.

Personally I believe that it is only the open source world which drives the Microsoft's of the worlds innovative research. Without open source nipping at their heels, tech progress would be nowhere near what it is today.