Let's say that you have just finished a large software project that you did on your free time just for the fun of it. You test it, you find some bugs, you fix it and then you finally say: "There it is, it's ready". Now what? Do you show it to your friends? Do you try to sell it? Or you try to make the world a better place?

"What was that? Make the world a better place? How can I do that?" you say. Well, yes. How would you like that? Let me make myself clear.

First of all let me say that I'm a Computer Science student and spend most of my waking day in an academic institution. We have Computers but I can hardly sense the Science being around.

So you'll ask: "What is science?". Well I can tell you that it's not complicated formulas that only "scientists" understand. In my understanding science is method that the Man has in order to better understand his surroundings and developing solutions to his problems. I believe that it is in the best interest of every man to help advance science.

So how can we help science advance? There are many ways. There is the old way and there is the new way.

The old way: Academic institutions through state (and rarely corporate) funding research, go to conventions, discuss what they find, accept criticism, get new ideas.

The new way: Large corporations invest vast figures in their Research and Development, try to implement their findings as best and as fast as they can, obscure their innovations so that noone else can replicate them, try to make an "honest buck".

You'll say:"The new way must be the best one because technology nowadays is moving in a much greater speed than it did in the past". To that I have to say two things: a) the funding universities receive is far smaller than the funding of corporate R&D projects, b) technology is somewhat different than science.

What's with the new way?:

• Big corporations control the flow of technology. They can pause development if they see fit (to sell their outdated stock) or abandon it if they can't figure out how to implement it correctly.
• Only those that work for the company have access to the technology and sometimes they are either incapable of seeing it's true potential (if the company goes for young inexperienced cheap researchers) or restricted by company rules to perform their own innovations.
• Only profitable technological breakthroughs are to be developed as no corporation wants to lose money (there is the urban legend of oil companies finding alternative fuels and keeping it a secret).
• Can you say MONOPOLY (yup... the game)

• New jobs are created.
• People make money.
• Scientists getting paid for a change.

What's with the old way:

• The new technology gets hit by all the brainpower of the planet that can understand it, flaws are found, constructive criticism is made.
• Young people can have access to this knowledge and become better than their predecessors (kind of an evolutionary thing. When someone has no stimulation by his environment, he can't grow as fast end efficiently as he would in a "rich environment. Same goes for a project).
• Someone is bound to think of something better than what the original "creators" thought and advance the technology faster and more efficiently.

• What other hand. There is no other hand. Ok, maybe the one that though of the damn thing the first place won't be a billionaire.

As you can see I am obviously biased for the "old way" (Actually I can't say I have a clear picture about the present state of things, nor how it used to be. It's just my impression that things went bad).

In view of the above I can say that the best thing that happened to Computer Science in its brief history, is the Open Source movement. In a corporate jungle where crappy software is all over the place and the only thing you can do is wait for a patch by the vendor, Open Source is a powerful revolution that will stir things up a bit.

But besides the "civil" dimension of Open Source I think it is the greatest thing that coud ever happen to computer related Science. It's like having cutting edge breakthroughs a download away from your desktop and your text editor. Not that many years ago having the source code of a modern complex kernel meant that either you were a high end corporate executive (I doubt that a simple programmer has access to the entire source code of a large project), or that you were scaving through the garbage of one of them. That single fact still excited me (even though I have rarely looked at the linux kernel source).

So why should I opensource?

• Because you should you arrogant bastard
• Because YOU will get better by the criticism you will receive by the community
• Because you may not have realized it but you are doing science a favor (even if your code is the crappiest one ever build)
• Just do it. You can worry about the other stuff when you're old and ugly

PS: Yes yes you illmannered, stuck in the past, had too much TV and too little oxygen during birth, "I can't see further than my nose", labeling kind of guy,.. I am nothing but a communist. Go open some code.