Cooperation and Collaboration

In class we watched Howard Rheingold's TED talks about cooperation and collaboration. He makes a lot of points about how in the coming years we are entering an entirely new form of getting economic success through technology that is very different from anything we have done previously.  With this, cooperation and collaboration are very important.  He uses the example of the prisoner's dilemma game and how people tend to lose, however, with this new open sourcing it kind of defeats the prisoner's dilemma because people are allowed to help with certain projects and software to make it better and this is a win-win situation for companies that have the open sourcing as well as for the people participating in making it better. The whole point of open-sourcing is collaboration.  It allows anyone the opportunity, if they so desire, to alter a project in a way that they think improves it.  It also requires cooperation from the company and the people, because the project is constantly changing, which can be frustrating.

I really don't know how I feel about this open-source movement. It doesn't seem like a very stable thing, because when so many people are going in and making changes to something is there ever a point where everyone agrees that it is the best it can be? I doubt it. In perspective, I suppose it could be successful.  It sounds like a great idea, because people get a say in the product they want to use.  However, the odds of its success don't seem to be very high. I don't think that I would personally trust it. I think that people may move towards it at first,  but will probably get way too frustrated with the constant changing of it and just want their proprietary software back.  I do think that proprietary software companies will always have bank on software development and distribution, because not everyone knows how to do coding and go in and alter software and products in open-sourcing.  I also think that some people, my dad for instance, don't want their programs constantly changing on them.  They want something stable that they know how to use and don't have to be bothered by learning new things.

Overall, open-sourcing could surprise me and turn out to be really successful and give everyone an opportunity to help make software the best it can be.  However, I don't think I'll buy into it.  I don't mind using proprietary software.