“Open source” is not a metaphor
Daniel Terdiman at CNet has an article up today claiming that “the open source label doesn’t really fit Wikipedia.” He’s right about that, but his explanation is wrong.
Here’s what Terdiman says about open source: “‘Open source,’ at least the way it’s been used in tech circles over the years, usually connotes successful, volunteer projects like the Linux operating system, which has strict controls and is monitored by a handful of people who make the call on what is handed over to the public.”
This is not the way “open source” is used in tech circles, unless one of the people standing in the circle is someone who just wandered over from the people-who-misinterpret-the-literal-as-the-metaphorical circle.
“Open source” is not a metaphor. “Source” refers to the code written by programmers and used to by compilers to create binaries, the files that computers execute. “Open” means that the source is available to the person running the binary. In the words of dictionary.com, “open” can mean “available.” That’s the way the term is actually used in tech circles.
Terdiman is right that Linux is open source. You can test this claim by downloading the source to the 2.6.0 Linux kernel. You’ll get a compressed file, and if you open it, you’ll find source code inside. If you find a precompiled operating system kernel inside, then you will have proved me wrong. That’s all that you need to do. Whether Linux is a “successful volunteer project” or a nascent alternative to Windows backed by IBM, HP, and Sun does not affect whether it is open source or not. Whether the source is open or closed has nothing to do with whether the project has “strict controls” or not.
Calling Wikipedia open source doesn’t make any sense. There is no “source” other than the content of the encyclopedia itself. When you edit Wikipedia, you are editing the current version of the encyclopedia. You are not editing some “source,” that later gets compiled into a binary that is executed by a computer. (Yes, there is formatting markup that you can add to the text, but nobody is calling Wikipedia open source because you can change the formatting.)
The software that runs Wikipedia, called Mediawiki, is actually open source. As with the Linux kernel, you can prove this to yourself by downloading the source to the latest version, 1.5.3. If you find a web-based encyclopedia inside when you expand this compressed file, then I am lying.
I think that Daniel Terdiman should seriously consider the possibility that he has been propagating a misunderstanding about what “open source” means. He notes that the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, “doesn’t even like to call it ‘open source.’” That’s not because Jimmy Wales is worried that he’s not as strict in his controls as Linux founder Linus Torvalds. It’s because the term is wrong.
There are other terms that can be used to describe Wikipedia that are not wrong. “Collaborative” is pretty good. Later on, Terdiman calls Wikipedia: “grand and very subjective experiment in collective writing.” That’s sounds good too.
I suspect that what’s actually happened is that Terdiman has been misled by other confused journalists. For example, a few days ago, Katherine Seelye of the New York Times had an article in the International Herald Tribune titled: “Wikipedia: Open-source, and open to abuse.” However, her article didn’t actually use the phrase “Open source.” Through Google, I also found an article titled: “Wikipedia’s Open-Source Licks Open Wound” by Jaime Gottlieb that recounts the recent scandals with John Siegenthaler (former opinions editor for the fact-rich paper USA Today) and Adam Curry. Gottlieb’s article appears on 925M.com, “an online advertising community.” (I don’t know what that is.)
If anyone has counterexamples of “open source” being used to mean “collaboratively edited” or in some other metaphorical manner, I’d love to see them. In the meantime, I suggest Terdiman retitle his article, “Journalist notices discord from misuse of common technical term.”