ben van 't ende

I was fortunate to be able to discuss the topic here at TYPO3 Eastern Europe in Cluj, Romania. The discussion is very necessary I think. We should not assume that users of FOSS are aware of the dynamics behind that. I was also supposing that this would have been widely known by know by everybody, but it just is not. So advocacy and education on the topic from a basic level is still necessary.

For some users or clients it also does not really matter whether or not it is Open Source or proprietary. That will be increasingly less important.

Thinking about re-branding is important though considering the fact that things change in the way we produce software. A while back software projects were mainly driven by white male developers. Now diversity in software projects is becoming more important and even essential to open up the projects to further participation. Many projects are proud of their community and even want people to 'stay for the community' or the projects are 'more then software'. It is difficult to keep people involved in the project in a meaningful way or rather to keep them motivated.

Re-branding Open Source to Community Software would honour diversity and gives a sense of belonging.

Of course we cannot all of a sudden rename Open Source everywhere, but in the context of the conversation we can raise awareness by talking about Community Software.