If you think of the ideas of open source applied to information in an encyclopedia, you get to Wikipedia - lots and lots of small contributions that bubble up to something that's meaningful.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When I first got into technology I didn't really understand what open source was. Once I started writing software, I realized how important this would be.
I think open source is an evolutionary idea for humanity, this idea of transparency. It played out for us in the technology world, but it also played out with the idea of a truth and reconciliation commission and Wikipedia.
Open source is a beautiful way of collaborating; but what's happening on the free Internet is more akin to the 'crowdsourcing' of journalists and other content creators by advertisers who no longer have to pay them - only the search engines that parse their articles.
The accomplishment of open source is that it is the back end of the web, the invisible part, the part that you don't see as a user.
One thing about open source is that even the failures contribute to the next thing that comes up. Unlike a company that could spend a million dollars in two years and fail and there's nothing really to show for it, if you spend a million dollars on open source, you probably have something amazing that other people can build on.
In open source, we feel strongly that to really do something well, you have to get a lot of people involved.
Wikipedia was a big help for science, especially science communication, and it shows no sign of diminishing in importance.
Companies have been trying to figure out what it is that makes open source work.
Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It is fact-encirclingly huge, and it is idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking and full of simmering controversies - and it is free, and it is fast.
Wikipedia is kind of extreme, where a very, very small group of people contribute pretty much everything.