Changes

To articulate, assess and describe my humble personal views on open source, I have encapsulated my findings into three core components of what I believe to be the essence of open sourceas formulated into my personal view.

Open source projects live or die by contributions made by those who exist within a formulated community surrounding an open source project. In essence, the community acts as a shield; the best protection open source has is the community’s belief in it. In essence, this becomes the spirit of open source, a spirit based in freedom, artistic expression,technological innovations and opportunity. Building a community around a piece of open source software can be slow, hard work and success is contingent on many things. Nevertheless, without a community, there simply is no project. Community building does not happen automatically and has to be carefully managed.  Having been exposed to the world of open source software prior to DPS909, my view of the community aspect has not ''drastically'' changed. I became familiar with the world of open source software with Linux, in particular, with [http://debian.org Debian], now my favorite operating system - [http://www.ubuntu.org Ubuntu]. Having ''used'' an assortment of open source alternatives, for mere reasons as not being able to afford propitiatory software, I felt it was necessary to ''give back'' to the small time developers and subtle communities. Having people courteously and respectfully help me out in time of need, I whole heartedly feel as if it is necessary to return favor - ''give and ye shall receive''. Personally, I enjoy helping people solve their problems in Ubuntu because they helped me. Known by fact, if the community is absent, Ubuntu would be far less popular. The project thrives on the core essence of the well established community, who are able to submit feedback, patches, reviews, documentation, artwork and ideas to better the product. <br/>