You can kinda apply the FOSS philosophy to a lot of other things in life...

[Mazza558]

Consider that software in general is just ideas converted into code, and now think of this situation:

You're in school and your friend is beginning to copy your answer. Most people would immediately think "wait a minute, this guy has taken what I've written and copied it!" and you'd probably try and prevent said person from copying you. However, instead of preventing that guy from copying you, tell him, "you're free to copy this, and if you see any errors or any way to shorten what I've written, let me know. If anyone else tries to copy from you, let them copy..."

See what I mean? If I then asked someone who copied from the person who copied from me whether they found any errors, I could then borrow his improved version, we would have all learnt something (i.e by reading), and we'd all have a superior answer. Of course, this obviously wouldn't work in exams, but you get the idea. Maybe if the education system could encourage this, we'd all learn something new...

I guess essentially what I'm saying is that multiple minds are better than one...

Anyway, that'll be my late-night ramblings for you all. :)

[IYY]

Most of those who maintain the hacker ethic (on which the FOSS philosophy is based) also believe that it can and should be applied outside of computers. For example, art (CC), music (remix, folk), knowledge (wikipedia), science, literature, etc.

[-grubby]

IYY is right, I never thought about doing this, but what if I drew a drawing and we passed it around in a circle or something? Everyone would draw, and it would come out better than the stick figures that i can draw

[igknighted]

If I wrote a paper for class and shared it with my friends, then turned it in with a copy of the GPL stapled to it, do you think I would get in trouble for cheating?

[Darkhack]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_Movement

I support the Free Culture Movement and the Ubuntu philosophy in nearly all aspects of life. So yes, it goes far beyond just software.

[Eion]

I support open community projects. But I also believe that you should follow school rules, or else BadThings(tm) will happen :P

After switching to Ubuntu I have started to apply the mindset to other things in life aswell. Its amazing what you can do with all that time you previously spent fixing windows ;)

[az]

See what I mean? If I then asked someone who copied from the person who copied from me whether they found any errors, I could then borrow his improved version, we would have all learnt something (i.e by reading), and we'd all have a superior answer. Of course, this obviously wouldn't work in exams, but you get the idea. Maybe if the education system could encourage this, we'd all learn something new...

I guess essentially what I'm saying is that multiple minds are better than one...

Anyway, that'll be my late-night ramblings for you all. :)
That's how science works. You work on a hypothesis, prove it and publish your results. Science is useless unless it's published.

I reckon that's where RMS first got the idea.

[Kingsley]

lol
This reminds me of the few times I sold my work in high school. Despite whatever errors my property had, people still paid money to use it. A good proprietary example.

[FuturePilot]

I've often thought of the same kind of thing. It's a very interesting concept.

[dekeller]

I once took a phisics class that had a take home final. Every person in the class came to me for help. I did the test using multiple ways to solve every problem but the last and most difficult one. I told everybody they were on there own for that one. I think each person learned something about how to look a problems and they didn't get a total free ride.

P.S. I was the only one to solve the last problem

Darryl Keller

[akiratheoni]

I've thought about things like that, too. Then I also realized that a similar philosophy of FOSS could be applied to socialism or communism >.<

[Paul133]

Interesting. The FOSS philosophy can be applied to many things, but not everything. There are some tings that MUST be done individually, like "learning something new". Unless you do the problems on your own, you won't learn how to do them. If I want to learn bash, I can't simply use others' programs, although if I had to solve a problem with bash, I could. I can use others' work to accomplish a task, but it won't teach me anything. IF I want to learn how to do soemthing, I have to be able to do it individually. Tha's the definition of ability, being able to do someting on my own. If I only "know" bash because I use others' programs, I don't really know it. Right?

[Crashmaxx]

Consider that software in general is just ideas converted into code, and now think of this situation:

You're in school and your friend is beginning to copy your answer. Most people would immediately think "wait a minute, this guy has taken what I've written and copied it!" and you'd probably try and prevent said person from copying you. However, instead of preventing that guy from copying you, tell him, "you're free to copy this, and if you see any errors or any way to shorten what I've written, let me know. If anyone else tries to copy from you, let them copy..."

See what I mean? If I then asked someone who copied from the person who copied from me whether they found any errors, I could then borrow his improved version, we would have all learnt something (i.e by reading), and we'd all have a superior answer. Of course, this obviously wouldn't work in exams, but you get the idea. Maybe if the education system could encourage this, we'd all learn something new...

I guess essentially what I'm saying is that multiple minds are better than one...

Anyway, that'll be my late-night ramblings for you all. :)

Actually, I was seriously planning to make a website to do just this for a while. Something where you post up any notes and work you have for a class, and other add in what they have and fix what is posted. Eventually, you have the entire solution and full explanation of everything in a given class. Would quickly be THE tool for students and could help people learn a lot easier because of better and multiple explanations for every topic and concept.

But the reality is that this would be seen as an advanced form of cheating and I can only imagine so much resistance from the system that the site would quickly be totally outlawed and classes would be made more annoying to combat it. Stuff like different HW for each student, or at least new problems all the time. Not to mention the possibility of the site being sued. And so on and so forth. If you'd still like to implement this idea, feel free to and let me know. I could always use help with me school work.

The bottom line problem you get to with this is simple. School is not the place to have such a community effort. Nearly all of what is in school is known and the idea is to teach the students. Part of that is having us practice the concepts and part is measuring our competence afterwards.

There are a lot of valid arguments that can be made against a lot of aspects of this system. To a big degree I don't think there would be much wrong with this kind of sharing and maybe a site like I described would light a fire under the system's butt and make them change to a more effective system. But it would surely start a battle, maybe even an all out war, and there will be casualties. Students would likely be sued, and surely many would be kicked out of school. For me, I learned a long time ago that part of life is learning how to just deal with the system and adapt. In this case, it means just beating my procrastination habit and learning how to finally be productive. Honestly, that is really a skill I need to learn and will serve me my whole life. Fighting the system will cause a lot of pain and won't get me very far, if anywhere. And as soon as I get away from this system and into the next (ie: the career field) I will just want to fight that system and fail to adapt to it also. The reality is, that the system may be broken to some degree, but it is design to teach you primarily and to teach you to be able to work and such. Even if I know everything, if I'm too lazy to work, I'll never have a job, nor accomplish anything. So there is, for the most part, a method to the system's madness.

[Darkhack]

I've thought about things like that, too. Then I also realized that a similar philosophy of FOSS could be applied to socialism or communism >.<

If you've ever seen the movie Revolution OS, a documentary about Linux, this issue was addressed. There is a difference between helping your neighbor and forcing equality. Communism is about forcing everyone to be equal both socially and economically while also promoting the idea of "take what you need and give what you can". FOSS isn't like that. Hell, KDE and GNOME are in heavy competition as are many other FOSS applications that battle with each other. Google is an example of a company that has proven very profitable while supporting many of the free culture ideas. If anything, the free culture movement supports freedom more than other groups by fighting DRM and supporting the rights of users. I've also heard the analogy of comparing free culture to roads and highways which are free and managed by the government in most nations. FOSS is just like that, but we are all competing to build a better highway while still providing for the common good. It's also about choice. Being able to mix and match window managers with the OS for example. Windows is just Windows. Linux can be any number of things and you don't even have to use a Linux kernel if you don't want to. There are also BSD or even non-UNIX operating systems to choose from.

[Mateo]

I'm going to walk into KFC and demand the secret recipe to their chicken. Open-source baby.

[Mateo]

If you've ever seen the movie Revolution OS, a documentary about Linux, this issue was addressed. There is a difference between helping your neighbor and forcing equality. Communism is about forcing everyone to be equal both socially and economically while also promoting the idea of "take what you need and give what you can". FOSS isn't like that. Hell, KDE and GNOME are in heavy competition as are many other FOSS applications that battle with each other. Google is an example of a company that has proven very profitable while supporting many of the free culture ideas. If anything, the free culture movement supports freedom more than other groups by fighting DRM and supporting the rights of users. I've also heard the analogy of comparing free culture to roads and highways which are free and managed by the government in most nations. FOSS is just like that, but we are all competing to build a better highway while still providing for the common good. It's also about choice. Being able to mix and match window managers with the OS for example. Windows is just Windows. Linux can be any number of things and you don't even have to use a Linux kernel if you don't want to. There are also BSD or even non-UNIX operating systems to choose from.

There are elements of the FOSS community who advocate Orwellian policies though. Like those who agree with the EU initiative to ban computer manufacturers from preinstalling operating systems. It's sad but there are many people who do support forcing open source on everyone else.

[klange]

I've thought about things like that, too. Then I also realized that a similar philosophy of FOSS could be applied to socialism or communism >.<
The term is "communist anarchism", referring to a system where all economic progress is by the overall community and government is decentralized to the extreme.

[aysiu]

I seriously disagree with applying the FOSS concept to homework, unless the teacher explicitly allows such an approach.

The point of FOSS is cooperation and freedom. It is an efficient model that allows people to build on each other's work and "stand on the shoulders of giants," as it were.

Many homework assignments, however, are not designed to be efficient or be expressions of freedom. They're designed to help you practice a concept or strategy, attain knowledge in preparation for a discussion, or make you a better writer. You do not achieve these ends by copying someone else's paper and then tweaking a few words here and there. That's called plagiarism in the academic world.

[inversekinetix]

I wonder how many people would feel the same if they invented something, that if they copyrighted, would make them 100s of millions of $s. What percentage of FOSSees do you think would turn down the money in favor of sharing what they had created for free.

Giving for free and building on others' work is good and well, but I think the majority of people would take the money if it came down to it.

[bruce89]

You're in school and your friend is beginning to copy your answer. Most people would immediately think "wait a minute, this guy has taken what I've written and copied it!" and you'd probably try and prevent said person from copying you. However, instead of preventing that guy from copying you, tell him, "you're free to copy this, and if you see any errors or any way to shorten what I've written, let me know. If anyone else tries to copy from you, let them copy..."

Shorten it? Short code is bad code.

OpenStreetMap (http://www.openstreetmap.org/) might be of interest.