Stephen Tong is a Master’s of Information student at the University of Toronto. While programming isn’t isn't exactly his “thing”, his general interest in Open Source as well as Bitcoin led him to the investigation as to why Bitcoin has actually started to succeed where many other attempts at Digital/Online Currency failed. Stephen explained the phenomenon that surrounds Satoshi Nakamoto, the dubbed founder (or founders…) of the Bitcoin protocol and software. The purpose as he stated from his presentation was to find out how Bitcoin started from an idea, leading to an experiment and now resulting in actual currency.

Between both presentations it was clear to see that both projects have reached a successful point because of the open source community. When these projects reach the open source community, it gives the project a chance for users to see what is available to them and to align their needs to it. With Bitcoin, once Satoshi (Satoshi Nakamoto was rumored to be either one person or could have also been a group of developers) had completed his “Cathedral” bitcoin Bitcoin system, it was through the use of forums and the bitcoin Bitcoin mailing list that others started gaining interest in his new currency system. It was in December 2009 that his (or their..?) release 0.2 had been given to the hands of the open source community and development had begun to take off. For OpenStack, users and companies (such as Red Hat and Nasa) realized a need for enterprise level Virtualization to help manage tasks such as Remote Server communication, etc. Once companies and users could realize that they could grab the code for this purpose, they could then begin to tailor the available tools to meet their needs. It was this that led to the development of the many main components necessary to run OpenStack strongly and securely. Because OpenStack was open source software, components for storage, networking, identity management, and imaging were all allowed to come to fruition and help set OpenStack on it’s way to becoming a capable and robust solution for even Enterprise level development.

By bringing open source software to a community it allows wider support besides software development. Open source had brought a form of open source marketing to them. With Bitcoin, it was during development at sometime during the summer of 2010 that developers had wanted to make the offer of 10000 bitcoins Bitcoins for some pizza. Two pizzas were delivered to the team and the pizza maker now holds onto currency that is potentially worth millions of dollars; all for delivering two pizzas. This allowed bitcoin Bitcoin the chance to be recognized as actual currency. This kind of notoriety gains notice among the community, potentially reaching through the vines of social media and allowing for potential further investment. With OpenStack, it was seeing the need for tailored virtualization that allowed the product to reach the eyes and ears of companies like AT&T, Intel, HP, NASA and CERN.