Chapter 6 Chapter 2 10 Powers to Flatten the World (3)

Community Development Software The community development software movement, also known as the open source community.He grew out of the idea that a company or a specific community should make the source code, the basic program instructions that make software work, available online so that those who can contribute can improve it, millions of people People can also meet their own needs by downloading.Think of these communities as chat rooms where freelance engineers work together to develop software, where everyone contributes to improving the source code, and everyone can use that source code as long as they follow the licensing guidelines of the particular open source community.Although the operating rules of these communities are basically the same, they can also be divided into two categories.One, what we call the knowledge democratization community, basically everyone in the community can use the source code as the basis for a commercial product as long as they approve the creation of the aid.That way if the software is later improved, adapted, and used, you must acknowledge the original community's contribution each time.Second, we call it the free software community. If you create and distribute any derivative products based on the free software code developed by the community, you also need to return the innovation results to the community.In other words, your spinoffs should also be free.

I'm not a computer nerd myself, and I've never paid attention to the open source movement before, but when I really noticed it, I realized it's an amazing world full of spontaneous online communities and willing Volunteers who share their views with each other and inform the public for free.The earliest community-developed software movements took an approach to the democratization of knowledge.The intellectual democratization movement is largely rooted in academia and the sciences, where spontaneous collaborative communities of scientists have long been connected by personal relationships and later, with the advent of the Web, through which they share their perspectives around specific scientific or mathematical problems.The Apache web server is rooted in this form of open source.

I asked a friend - IT system engineer Mike.Arghello explained to me why people share knowledge or work in this way. He said: "IT people are very smart, and they want others to know how smart they are." Inventing Netscape The first web browser Andreessen of Architects agrees: "Open source is nothing more than peer-reviewed science. Sometimes they share discoveries and scientific results just for the credit, and sometimes they do it for business." , and sometimes they just want to increase the amount of knowledge in the world. And peer review is important - the purpose of open source is to be checked by peers, and every flaw, security hole, or non-standard place in the program will be checked Check it out. Some people also get a sense of accomplishment from challenging a software giant like Microsoft or IBM because it can prove they can create something better for free.”

To learn more about the intellectual democratization of the software development movement, I started surveying chat room guys.Finally I found the leader of them all, Brian.behlendorf.If the Apache web server is an Indiana tribe, Behlendorf is the head of the tribe.He is now the CTO of Collab Net, a company that provides software to customers who want to innovate in an open-source way.When I meet him in his fiberglass office near the San Francisco airport, I start by asking two simple questions: Where are you from?How did you get a group of networking geeks who might compete with IBM to come together and create an open source community?

Behlendorf recalled: "My parents met at IBM in Southern California. I grew up in La Canada, a small town north of Pasadena in Southern California. Because many children's parents are in I work in the Propulsion Technology Laboratory at Caltech, so from a very young age, I grew up in a very scientific environment. We always had computers in our house, and we used punched cards from early IBM mainframes to make shopping lists. I started making basic programs when I was in elementary school, and I was already a computer whiz in high school... I graduated high school in 1991, but in 1989 when the Internet was just starting, a friend gave me the Program backup.Although this program called Fractint is free software, it is not a pirated copy. It is a program for drawing irregular fragment patterns.When the program was launched, the screen displayed the email addresses of all the researchers involved, and I noticed that the source code was also included.This is my first exposure to the concept of source code.It's a program you download for free, and they even give you the source code.

This gave me a whole new perspective on programming.I realized that there are many ways to write software, and it is not as boring as I used to think-a professional software developer sitting at the mainframe to complete the information input and commercialization process. "Behlendorf went to Berkeley University to study physics after graduating from high school in 1991, but he soon became tired of the disconnection between classroom teaching and real life. He said: "When I was in college, my classmates used emails to communicate with each other and posted their opinions on music on online discussion boards. In 1992, I started my own web mailing list, focusing on the electronic music festivals in the Bay Area.Everyone can post on the discussion board, so we started talking about different music events and music show supporters.We said, 'Why not invite the hosts yourself and have your own show? ’ So it became a group project.Some say, 'I have some records. ’ Some said, ‘I have a sound system. ’ and others said, ‘I know there’s a beach where you can have a party at midnight. 'By 1993, the Internet was just mailing lists, e-mail, and FTP sites (file transfer protocol).So I started to collect various materials about electronic music, and planned to put them on the Internet so that more people can share resources.At this time, I heard about Mosaic (the web browser developed by Anderson), so I found a job in the computer laboratory of Berkeley Business School. A generation of web browsers and servers for human communication. (A web server is software that allows an individual to use a home or office computer to "access" various websites. For example, let's take Amazon, which has been running its website on Apache's servers. When your web browser logs into Amazon The first software that the browser talks to is Apache. The browser asks Apache to find Amazon’s webpage, and then Apache sends back the content of the webpage to the browser. The process of surfing the Internet is actually The interaction process between the browser and the different web servers.)

Behlendorf recalled: "I watched the debate between Tim Berners-Lee and Mark Anderson in the forum, which was very interesting. I found that these scientific researchers and my music team had something in common. They share a common interest in developing the first Internet software. I told this to a friend of mine (who was one of Wired's earliest employees), and he said, "Wired wants me to help They built a website. So I took this $10-an-hour job to set up their e-mail and their first website, the Hotline website ... which was the first e-newsletter with online advertising."

The Hotline website wanted a registration system that required a password—an oxymoron at the time. Andrew, who published the history of Apache development in "Salon" magazine in 1997."Most webmasters rely on web servers developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois (the birthplace of the Mosaic web browser, or 'Application Center' for short), but their servers can't run hotline sites," Leonardo points out. We provide cryptographic authentication services for our clients’ needs. Fortunately, the application center’s server is not subject to patent restrictions, which means that its source code is freely available to all.” So Berendorff turned to his expertise as a computer hacker: he wrote a new Code as a patch to the application center server software, and the problem is solved.Leonardo commented: "Behlendorf wasn't the only clever programmer. In this exploding online world, other network administrators felt compelled to do the same.

Rob, a student at the University of Illinois.McCool and Mark.Anderson and Lynx author Eric. Biener was poached together by a Silicon Valley company called Netscape.Meanwhile, the web doesn't stop evolving, it continues to create new problems for web servers to contend with.So various types of patches are multiplying on broadband like sticky strips. "Meanwhile, all these patches are slowly forming a new modern web server in an open source way, but everyone has his/her own version, swapping patches here and there, because the app center Your lab can't cope with all the new problems that arise on the web.

"I was pretty much a dropout at the time," Behlendorf explained. "Building the Wired site was a lot of fun and allowed me to learn more than I could at Berkeley. We gave the application center work Someone sent a patch for the server, but got no response. There was a discussion in our workgroup about this. We said, 'What will the future be like if the app center doesn't respond to our patches? 'While we'd love to continue to improve the system, we're concerned that we won't get feedback and patches won't be integrated.So I started reaching out to other guys who traded patches... most of them were members of the internet engineering task force that set the original standards for web applications... and we said, 'Why should we How about not taking care of the future yourself and releasing a version of the web server that pulls all the patches together? ’” He also recalled: “We looked at the copyright rules for the application center server software.It just says that if we can perfect the code, we will get credit at the University of Illinois, but if we don't, we won't be blamed.So we set out to create our own version.While none of us could work full-time on web server development, we believed that if we could communicate and collaborate in an open fashion, we could create servers that were better than what was available in the market - which were not actually available at the time.This was all before Netscape started selling commercial web servers and the beginning of the Apache project. "

As of February 1999, they have rewritten the original application center program and used "Apache" The name formalizes their collaboration."I chose the name Apache for its positive connotations," Behlendorf said. The Apache Nation was the last nation to submit to the US government.We were worried that sooner or later big corporations would compete and 'civilize' the land of the original web, so in my opinion Apache was a good code name, and some say it's a pun - because like APAtCHy (Same as Apache's English name Apache, which means a server composed of patches), as the name indicates, they are indeed patching the server. "So in many ways, Behlendorf and his open-source colleagues — most of whom he's never met and only emails through open-source chat rooms — have created a virtual, An online, bottom-up software factory owned by no one and supervised by no one. He said: "We already have a software project, but the coordination and direction in it is a natural behavior, it is made by Hopefully whoever wrote the code decides. " How does it all work, I asked Behlendorf?You can't just let a bunch of unsupervised people throw code together, can you?He explained: "Most software development involves a source code repository managed by a concurrent versioning system (CVS). I also have the CVS program on my computer, and I can connect to the CVS server and Copy the source code so I can modify it. If I feel the patch is something I want to share with others, I run a program called 'patch' which allows me to create a new file, Putting all the changes together, this new file is called a patch file. I can give it to someone else to apply it to their copy of the code and test the effectiveness of the patch. If I have privileged access to the server (restricted to a tightly controlled regulatory organization), I can submit patches to the source code repository, making them part of the source code. The CVS server logs everything... …you can read the contents of the code base, but have no power to change them.If someone submits a patch file to the source code repository, the patch file will be emailed to all other developers, you will receive peer supervision, and if it is found to be wrong, you will be responsible for making changes. "So how does the community decide who is trustworthy?" Behlendorf said: "Apache started with eight members, and we trusted each other.With the newcomers appearing in the forum and the patch files they provided, we gradually began to trust others, and the 8 members increased to more than 1000 later.We were the first open source project to gain corporate attention and the earliest support from IBM. " Leonardo of Salon magazine said that because Apache could make thousands of different virtual Web sites—music, data, text—appear on a single server computer, it began to "capture the Web server market." IBM was supposed to sell its own web server, GO, but it only managed to capture a tiny share of the market.Apache servers are not only more technical, but also free.So IBM finally decided that if it couldn't beat Apache, it would join Apache.You should think about it.The world's largest computer company, IBM, decided that its engineers were not as skilled in open source as these tech lunatics, so they simply gave up their technology and joined the ranks of these lunatics! "I was contacted by IBM in the first place, so I kind of acted as an Apache spokesperson," Behlendorf said. IBM said, 'We want to know how to use Apache without being affected How can the excessive influence of the online community promote the sustainable development of software development, not just arouse people's interest...'IBM means that this new model of software development is trustworthy and precious , so we should invest in it while abandoning the model we're trying to build ourselves." john.Swensen was the senior executive who led the IBM team to deal with Apache (now the chairman of CA Computer Corporation).He tells the story: "There was a lot of debate about the open source movement. We thought we could deal with the Apache guys because they answered our questions. We can have meaningful conversations with them, and we can create a non-profit Apache Software Foundation and address all the issues. " Funded by IBM, its lawyers and Apache members worked together to create a legal framework so that companies like IBM that wanted to build applications based on Apache and sell them would have little trouble with copyright or debt . IBM sees the value in standardized web server infrastructure -- which allows systems and devices of different types of computers to talk to each other and present e-mail and web pages in a standard format -- which is being continuously improved by the open-source community for free.The Apache collaborators didn't intend to just do free software at the beginning. They wanted to solve a common problem-the problem of network services-and found that open source, a free way to cooperate, was to gather the best talents to complete the project. The best way to work. "When we first worked with Apache, there was an Apache.org website, but there was no formal legal framework, and this kind of informal framework didn't work well with their business. What you need is to be able to check A framework for code, signing agreements, and dealing with debt. Anyone can download Apache code today, their only obligation is to acknowledge that they downloaded it from the Apache website, and if modifications are made to the download, they must share it with the website. "There's also an Apache development program that manages these things, and when you go into that program, you feel like you're in a purely meritocratic society," Svensson added.When IBM started using the Apache server, it became part of and contributed to this community. In fact, what Apache asked of IBM was that IBM send its best engineers to Apache's open source team and contribute to it for free."Apache people aren't interested in cash payments, they're more interested in infrastructure contributions," Swenson said. "Our engineers said, 'Apache has a really good team, and they insisted that we provide great talent. .’ At first they rejected a few engineers we recommended, they didn’t think these people were qualified!” On June 21, 1998, IBM announced plans to integrate Apache into its new server product, WebSphere.The way the Apache community is organized is that no matter what improvements you make to the Apache code, you have to share it with the community.However, you can also build proprietary commercial products based on Apache code, as IBM does, provided your patent includes a copyright reference to Apache.In other words, open source in this democratized form of knowledge encourages people to create commercial products based on it.While it wants the Apache Software Foundation to be free and open to all, it also acknowledges that it can only stay alive if there is an incentive for both commercial and non-commercial engineers to actively participate. Today, Apache is one of the most successful open source tools, powering 2/3 of the world's websites. Since Apache is free to download anywhere in the world, people from Russia, South Africa, and Vietnam use it to create websites.Individuals who need or want to add special features to their web servers can purchase products like WebSphere. IBM selling products based on open source programs seemed a dangerous move at the time. However, IBM believes that it can continue to develop differentiated software application products based on Apache's "vanilla product" (vanilla product, which can also be "common product").Indeed, IBM's network server business has indeed made it a commercial leader in such software products, bringing him huge profits and promoting IBM's business model. I repeat this a lot in this book: In a flat world, most companies' "vanilla products" There is no future, and a lot of "vanilla products" in software and other fields will be transferred to the open source community. For most companies, if they want to seize their future, they must know how to make the sundae with the most delicious chocolate sauce, the most delicious cream and the most juicy cherries.Jack, chairman of Novell Software, the distributor of the open source operating system Linux.Messman said it best: "Commercial software companies have to differentiate themselves. The open source community is largely concerned with infrastructure." (Financial Times, June 14, 2004) Big Blue's IBM-Apache deal was indeed a watershed moment. IBM says it believes in the open source model, and that engineers in the Apache open source community have created a web server that is not only useful and valuable, but "best of its kind."That's why the open source movement can be a powerful flattening factor, and its effects are becoming apparent day by day."It doesn't matter where you're from, it doesn't matter where you are — people in India and South America can use and improve on this software just as well as engineers in Silicon Valley," Behlendorf said. It's all covered: I write it, I own it - the standard software licensing model."The only way to compete with it is to make everyone a winner," concluded Behlendorf. Another form of community-developed software is the free software movement. The Openknowledge.org website describes the free software movement this way: "It arose in the context of the 'hacker' culture of the American computer science laboratories (Stanford, Berkeley, Carnegie-Mellon, and MIT) in the 1960s and 1970s. The community of programmers is not only small, but well-organized. Code is passed around among members of the community - if you make changes to it, you should repost the modified code to other members of the community. If you don't want to It would be considered disrespectful to reveal it to others - after all you have benefited from your friend's work and you should reciprocate." The free software movement has always been influenced by the idea that software should be free and open to all, and should rely on open source collaboration to produce the best software that can be freely shared.The main goal of the free software movement is to allow as many people as possible to write, improve and distribute software for free, believing that this will empower everyone and liberate individuals from the control of global corporations. Richard, a researcher at MIT and one of the previous hackers, in 1984.Matthew.Stallman started the "free software movement" and also created a free operating system called GNU.To promote this free software, but also to ensure that this code can always be freely modified and distributed, Stallman created the Free Software Foundation and the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL specifies that users of the source code can view, change, or add to the source code, provided that the changes they make must still be available under the operating license of the original code. In 1991, a student at the University of Helsinki named Linus.Torvalds' students built his Linux operating system on the basis of Stallman's software to compete with Microsoft's Windows operating system. He also invited his friends and other engineers on the Internet to improve this operating system, but it must be free.Since Torvalds' first post, programmers all over the world have modified, filled in, and perfected the GNU/Linux operating system.But one thing Torvalds insists on is that Linux must be free.Its operating license states that anyone can download the source code and improve it, but they must make the improved version freely available to others. Much like Microsoft Windows, Linux offers a range of operating systems that can be used on the smallest desktops, laptops, PDAs, and even wrist watches, as well as the largest supercomputers and mainframes.So a young kid on a cheap computer in India can learn about the operating system used by an American company's largest data center from his own computer.There are many developers around the world who are working hard to perfect Linux.As I write this chapter, I am attending a picnic at the rural Virginia home of the Baldwins, friends of my wife's from the educational NGO World Learning.Over lunch, I mentioned that I was going to the town of Timbuktu in Mali to see how flat the world really is from the outermost point.The Baldwins' son Peter happened to be working in Mali at the time, a staff member of Geek Corps, a non-profit organization that helps developing countries develop high technology.A few days later, I got an e-mail from Mrs. Baldwin telling me that she had told Peter about asking her to accompany me to Timbuktu, and what she said next told me everything I wanted to know thing, "Peter says their project is to create a wireless network via satellite, make an antenna out of plastic soda bottles, make mesh out of window screens! Apparently every Malian uses Linux..." Only in a flat world do you hear comments like this. The free software movement has posed a huge threat to Microsoft and other global software giants.As Fortune magazine reported on February 23, 2004, "This powerful foundational software builds on Intel's ubiquitous microprocessors while also catering to the exponential growth of the Internet." Gaining popularity among programmers and business users around the world. The significance of this innovation has long surpassed little Linux... Almost any type of software can be found in open source. One place for programmers to meet on the Internet is SourceForge. net lists a total of 86,000 programs. Although these are trivial little designs for many network experts, many software are very valuable.. If you don't want to spend $350 for Microsoft Office software, Adobe The company’s Photoshop costs $600, and you can go to OpenOffice.org and Gimp to find high-quality free products.” Sites like Google, E-trade, and Amazon use Intel’s commodity servers and Linux operating systems together, which is extremely popular. Dadi lowered their R&D spending and increased their control over the software. To be honest, although Linux and Apache started out as a pure form of community-developed software, uploaded by a spontaneous collaborative community, Apache soon became a hybrid model, mainly due to the partnership with IBM. Some people improved Apache for free, and others were hired by IBM to do the work, so the company could sell services, upgrades, and add-ons developed around the underlying software.At the same time, we see that venture capitalists are also providing funding for open source start-ups, by paying software companies a certain fee and asking the latter to release some programs for free, so that the community will use and develop these programs, and in turn, start-ups can sell themselves Additional products developed to make a profit.Red Hat, for example, supports Linux and other open source developments and has built a business model around them.Red Hat won't sell you Linux itself, that's not allowed, but it can customize Linux, provide technical support, and charge a fee. These hybrid models may be the way of the future.Why?First, if a complex software platform is to be sustainable, that is, if it is to be constantly updated, adjusted, and improved, it must be served by an economy that revolves around it.Software developers in the open source community only have so much time, interest, energy, and intelligence to develop code for no pay.In a way, this work cannot be done at its highest level without financial incentives for some people in the community. In the case of Linux, it was heartening that people in Mali were able to download software for free, unfortunately Linux is no longer developed for free.No one should have any illusions about offering free software packages for Linux. IBM doesn't sell an operating system that competes with Linux, but IBM sells software that competes with Microsoft.So IBM was more than happy to hire highly skilled software engineers to improve Linux as a competitor to Microsoft Windows, thereby cutting Microsoft's profits and its ability to compete with IBM in some areas.For the same reason, Sun Microelectronics created OpenOffice.org. As stated on Sun Microelectronics' website, the OpenOffice.org community was created by Sun Microelectronics in 2000.Sun Microsystems is a key member of this active community, promoting and supporting the Office components of OpenOffice.org. Hey, that's business.But that's business.What matters from the consumer's perspective is that the hybrid model of community-developed software fosters more competition and produces cheaper products for the public—if the software isn't free. Needless to say, the whole concept of community development software has been hotly debated throughout Microsoft.Given the company's centrality to the software industry, I think it's also important to listen to them.This is part of my discussion in Redmond: From Microsoft's point of view, the hybrid model that has evolved from the community software movement is indeed a new form of business competition, and no one should have any illusions about it.Regardless of what the creators of the community development software movement intended or hoped for, community development software has not, in fact, developed as originally envisioned.Today, the community software movement is a business, with potential for Microsoft and companies of all kinds. As I said just now, the senior Microsoft officials I communicated with still believe that this software model has limitations, and it will not and should not replace the traditional business software industry. The reasons are as follows: First, Microsoft believes that if innovators cannot get economic benefits Rewards, the incentives for breakthrough innovations, will eventually dry up, and the in-depth R&D driving progress in this increasingly complex field will be underfunded.Microsoft's success in creating the standard operating system for personal computers allowed it to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on research and development that eventually led to Office applications that sold for hundreds of dollars. As Microsoft CTO Craig.Mundy said: The virtuous cycle of innovation, return, reinvestment, and more innovation has promoted major breakthroughs in software companies.We know that software is also an industry with economies of scale. It takes huge sums of money to develop a software product to begin with, and then the marginal product of producing each product becomes small, but when you sell a lot, you recoup your investment, and then put the profits back into developing the next generation of products.However, if you insist that you cannot charge for software products, you will give up a lot of profits, and the software industry will no longer be an economy of scale industry. He continued: "It's true that scientific research will increasingly require more effort from the community, but I think that's more because of the complexity of the problems that require interdisciplinary collaboration than because it leads to true innovation." The basic vision of the company comes from the group rather than the individual.I believe open source will continue as a powerful development trend, but it will mostly shift toward the long-standing model of democratizing knowledge in academia rather than removing the economic incentives for software. bill.Gates added: "You need capitalism to drive innovation. It's against the direction of the world to say that innovation isn't worth the economic incentive at all. I talk to some Chinese and their dream is often to start a company. They want It's not like, 'I'm going to be a barber by day and develop free software by night'.. If you have a security crisis in your software system, you don't say, 'Where's the guy in the barbershop? '" Mundy points out that no matter what industry you're in, sooner or later you'll find that if the same free software is available to everyone, without private software and IT systems that embody and promote your core competencies, you'll have a hard time getting and maintaining Competitiveness. Companies want to have systems designed for themselves, and IT toolboxes designed for them that others don't have. In this way, Microsoft believes that there will be a lot of room for private software systems. In the end, the scale and scope will be critical Important. For students and companies, you can travel the world with your computer and find a standard Microsoft word program to write papers or business reports. I don't want to have to change to a different word processing program every time I go. Facilitate job flow. But the reason I think community-developed software is here to stay, too, is that while it may not be sustainable as a tool for making and disseminating breakthroughs to some extent, without economic incentives, it has proven to be very powerful. Before 2004, the Linux operating system was the most famous open source software challenge to Microsoft.Then, in November 2004, Mozilla, a non-profit group that supports open source software, The Foundation launches the Firefox web browser. The New York Times (December 19, 2004) Randall, a technology reporter.Stroth said it made up for the lack of Microsoft's IE browser.The easy-to-install Firefox 1.0 was launched on November 9, and it was downloaded 10 million times within a month.Loyal Firefox users also donated money for it to be advertised on 2 pages in The New York Times.Stross added: "Firefox brings open source software out of the back office and into your home, into your parents (your kids in college are already using open source software). It's like Microsoft's IE is just as easy to use, and by its one-year anniversary in November 2005, Firefox had about 10 percent of the global browser market, most of which was Microsoft's original share." One of the reasons for Firefox's rapid expansion in the market is its community-developed nature: users can contribute to the way it is developed, and in fact, individual applications added to the browser are written by users.By November 2005, a new hybrid version, Firefox 1.5, was coming out. 当你认识了火狐的产生过程后，你会对它的爆炸式增长感到惊奇。火狐实际是在Mosaic和网景浏览器的基础上发展而来的，网景浏览器1998年被微软的IE击败。同时，《连线》（2005年2 月）报道，和其他开放源的软件一样，火狐是很多不同的程序员改进和提高的结果，其中两个人更是功不可没：他们是布莱克。 罗斯和本。古德杰。布莱克。罗斯是一个瘦瘦的、留着黑碎发的19岁男孩，在斯坦福大学读大二，超爱运动；本。古德杰是一个矮胖的新西兰人，今年24岁，说话声音轻柔。罗斯在14岁那年登陆到他们家的美国在线账户，并开始为莫芮拉集团（由负责维护网景浏览器源代码的程序员组成）修改程序缺陷。很快罗斯就不再满足于对网景浏览器的修修补补。2002年，他突然决定开发一个轻巧、快速、容易操作的浏览器。2003年罗斯成为全日制大学生后，古德杰拿起“接力棒”。 他将整个项目进行整合，使浏览器成型，并在去年底（2004）推出火狐1.0 版本。 于是，一个来自斯坦福大学的19岁男孩和一个来自新西兰的24岁小伙，从地球的两端开始不计报酬地在开放源社区工作，开发出在短短6 个月的时间内就抢走IE 5% 市场份额的浏览器。我特别喜欢罗斯在《连线》中谈及的他第一次上传和上九年级时首次以黑客身份攻击莫芮拉的感受：让人感到不可思议的是，你可以接触到这么多人使用的东西。你已经让全世界都在运用的应用程序发生了某些改变。 与下载相比，上传的诱惑是无以形容的。 概要：世界的变平给软件行业带来了另一场震动。我想我们将目睹一个新均衡的出现，所有不同形式的软件会适得其所：传统商业软件微软或SAP 、租用软件的商业网络模式la Salesforce.com 以及要么由社区自主地要么靠个人灵感开发的免费软件。 社区开发答案布赖恩。贝伦多夫本人以自己的事业打赌，越来越多的人和公司将希望利用平坦世界的新平台对各种产品进行社区开发的创新。2004年，他开办了一个名为CollabNet 的公司，推动公司以社区开发为工具带动软件创新。比如说，CollabNet 公司创建了安全网站，有密码的用户可以看到软件源代码和需要处理的瑕疵，而后用户可以与工程师、生产部门经理和客户支持讨论应该怎样改进软件。这是一个完全平坦、摩擦较少的环境，可以促进合作并克服障碍。布赖恩。贝伦多夫说，CollabNet 公司是令世界变平的各种力量的武器交易商。我们在这个世界上扮演的角色是，建设各种工具和基础设施，这样印度人、中国人或者不管在哪的顾问、雇员或者呆在家里的人们能够开展合作。我们正给予他们可以分散合作开发的工具箱。我们让从下而上的发展成为可能，这并不局限于网络。CollabNet 公司主要关注于怎样让公司通过内部合作开发自己的开放源软件，并保证其不断更新。除了软件行业外，其他行业也是一样：如果能激发社区的创新力量，你会发现还有很多商机。开发源方法的另一个创新方式出现在几年前，加拿大黄金开采股份有限公司试图敦促我们所有人去发现黄金储备。根据《快速访客》（Fast Company）杂志2002年6 月一期的报道：1848年1 月，一个工作组在加利福尼亚州萨克拉门托市附近的约翰〃萨特斯（John Sutters） 矿区偶然发现了极好的天然金块，50万采矿者很快蜂拥而至，梦想一日发财。 淘金热仍在继续。大约153 年后，有一个淘金热在安大略省西北部一个被称为红湖（Red Lake）的老矿爆发。 这次，淘金者运用地质建模软件和数据库而非铁锄与铁铲作为开采工具。这些大赢家来自澳大利亚，他们可从来没见过矿藏。 黄金开采股份有限公司位于多伦多市，其总裁兼首席执行官罗布〃麦克文（Rob McEwen） 给全球地理学家带来一个非同寻常的挑战，进而触发淘金热：我们将在红湖矿的网站上向您展示我们所有的数据。希望您告诉我们那里能再找到600 万盎司（1 盎司=31.1035克）的黄金，奖金：共计57.5万美元，最高奖金10.5万美元。 采矿业哑然失色。获奖组织不规则型制图公司（Fractal Graphics）来自澳大利亚的西佩斯，其常务董事尼克〃阿齐柏德说，我们已经看到来自政府调研网的大量数据。但是一家公司能发布这些信息并直截了当地宣称。我就在这。，这确实是相当不正常。 麦克文深知，被它称作。黄金公司挑战。（Goldcorp Challenge）的竞赛承担着很大风险。 首先，他让公司面临敌意收购的投标，但是继续按老规矩办事的奉献更大。 迈克文说，开矿是人类最古老的工业之一，这是一个很老很老的经济形式，但是，矿藏发现就像科技发现一样。 财富增加的预期能够同样迅速地创造财富，如果我们能更快地发现金矿，我们还真能提升公司价值。 迈克文身材矮小、声音不高、胡须整洁、衣着考究，相对其它落后的竞争者，他有一大优势：他不是矿工，他不像矿工那样思考，他不受矿工传统思维的限制。 年轻时，他子承父业进入投资行业，在美林集团工作。但他父亲也对黄金非常着迷，迈克文从小就在饭桌上听说矿工、采矿者和融资的故事。他很快也对黄金产生浓厚兴趣，经过苦心钻研，他设计出一个模型，描绘出想象中21世纪金矿公司的样子。1989年，他找到了机会：他以白衣骑士的身份介入并购战，一举成为安大略省一家表现不佳金矿的大股东。 这几乎不是一个梦想的实现。黄金市场当时处于低迷状态，金矿经营成本高昂，矿工罢工不断。迈克文甚至受到死亡威胁，但他知道金矿潜力巨大。他坦言，红湖黄金区有2 个处于经营状态的金矿和13个老矿，两者共生产出超过1800万盎司的黄金。紧接着他们的金矿曾生产出1000万盎司黄金，而他们自己仅生产出区区300 万盎司。 迈克文相信，临近矿山开采出的高级矿石存在于面积为5.5 万英亩（1 英亩=0.40 公顷） 的红湖的某处，但尚未发现这些矿石。他的战略于1999年在麻省理工学院的研讨会上开始成形。全球各地的公司总裁齐聚麻省理工学习先进的信息技术。最终，他们把注意力转移到了Linux 操作系统和开放源革命上。迈克文回忆说，当时我说，开放源代码，这正是我需要的！ 他的推理是：一旦他能引起世界级人才对在洪湖发现更多黄金这一问题的注意，就像Linux 设法吸引世界级程序员投入改善软件的事业一样，他也可以解除常规情况下难以获取的数以千计的。金点子……这时，他也能够加速勘探，提高发现金矿的概率。 刚开始时，黄金开采股份有限公司的地质学家对他们向全世界公布超秘密数据的主意感到震惊。加拿大地质调查局前任首席地球学家同时担任。黄金公司挑战。竞赛评委的詹姆斯〃M 〃弗兰克林博士说，这是一个非常保守、非常隐秘的行业。他们经常用暗语来对储量和勘探的数据进行保密。这么做完全不是它的风格。 但在2000年3 月的一次行业会议上，迈克文披露了。黄金公司挑战。计划，立即引起了外界反响。来自50个国家的1400多位科学家、工程师和地质学家下载了公司的数据资料并开始他们的虚拟勘探。当各种勘探结果提交上来时，5 位评委组成的工作组都对提交内容蕴含的创造力感到惊讶。澳大利亚的两个团队——在西佩斯的不规则型制图公司和在昆士兰的泰勒〃沃尔协会（Taylor Wall & Associates ） 合作取得了胜利，他们共同开发了有关矿井的三维图形描绘。 对麦克文而言，竞争本身就是一个金矿。他说，我们已经在获胜者指定的前五个目标的四个打了矿眼，这四个全部命中。但是，最重要的是，获胜者是从一个遥远的地方，在从未进行实地考察的情况下，分析数据库并建立目标的。很明显，这将成为未来趋势。 有了新的高级发现和现代化矿井设施，红湖最终正按着麦克文的预想发展。 1996年，红湖以每盎司360 美元的成本年产5.3 万盎司黄金。到2001年，此矿以每盎司59美元的成本年产50.4万盎司黄金。 《快速访客》杂志也注意到这一机会对竞争中获胜的拥有开放源的矿主是多么重要。 尽管安大略省的红湖和澳大利亚的西佩斯位于地球的两端，但这并没有让澳大利亚地质科学咨询公司——不规则型制图公司的尼克〃阿齐博尔德和它的团队以为他们不能在加拿大找到黄金。 2001年黄金公司挑战杯一等奖的获胜者——阿齐博尔德和他的合作伙伴分享了10.5万美元的奖金，因为他们指明了找到黄金的地点。阿齐博尔德说，我从未去过矿井，我也从未去过加拿大。 但当阿齐博尔德得知这一竞赛时，他认识到这对它的公司而言是个机会，其公司专门生产矿井的三维模型产品……由于奖金是由阿齐博尔德的团队和泰勒〃沃尔协会共同分享，阿齐博尔德的团队世纪获取的奖金几乎不能弥补此项目的成本，但公众效应却极大地推动了公司的经营业绩。他说，原本要花掉几年时间才能在北美地区获得认可，可这个项目却让我们一夜成名。 阿齐博尔德补充道，更重要的是，这场竞赛开阔了我们行业的视野，让我们认识到可以用一种新的方法进行勘探。他说，这对采矿业来说是个巨大的变革，就好像是黑暗大海中的一座灯塔。 采金业并不是社区开发创新和上传唯一的新前沿领域，政治领域也是新前沿之一。想想安德鲁。拉西耶（Andrew Rasiej ），他曾是音乐倡导者，建立了Mouse.org 网站，把更多科技引入纽约市的学校，他也是纽约市公众宣传办公室的民主党候选人，有点类似于城市巡视员，向市长提出有关社区关系的建议并负责调查市民对从路面坑洞到市政服务等方面的各种诉讼。我见到拉西耶（Rasiej） 时，他正建议纽约市提供广泛的无线网络基础设施，让任何人在任何地方都能使用手机和介入高速网络，他希望因为这一提议引起关注。然而，他最终没能入选，他的提议太超前了。但我相信他的提议迟早会引起关注。拉西耶认为，传统工业对政治的态度是一对多，也就是说，我们选举出某位先生或女士替我们解决问题。 而现代商业的新模式是，你让你的社团和顾客参与对各方面业务的一切讨论：从构思到设计，到负责生产和陪送的供应链，到收集和吸收客户的反馈并根据客户欣赏口味的变化做出更快回应。 拉西耶认为，现在到了运用同样原理的时候了，即运用多数人的力量来彻底改变市民生活并由此振作我们的民主。你不仅改善了城市的服务和居民的生活质量，你也让人们参与决策，这些决策能影响他们的生活，让他们获得更轻松，并让他们能看到决策结果。目前的情况是，人们与政治进程相脱节，因为他们认为这与自己的生活无关。如果市长让每位公民为路面的每一个凹坑拍照，你会吃惊于人们的反应。拉西耶提议创建一个网站，任何公民都可用他/ 她的手机对路面的凹坑、濒临折断的危险围栏甚至是涉嫌犯罪的行为进行拍照，并把他们立刻通过电子邮件发给市政厅或张贴在官方网站上，这样每位公民实际上都成了潜在城市巡视员。 拉西耶坚持认为，尽管民主党总统候选人霍华德。迪安（Howard Dean ）发现了网络的威力，并以网络作为筹集竞选基金的主要渠道，但它实际上从未真正对网络进行过深入了解。其他的候选人也是如此，没有人试图开展一场真正平坦的竞选运动。 拉西耶说，迪安没有认识到，通过网络流入的竞选资金实际上只是不稳定的民主党团体和互相攻击的投票人的副产品。但相信我，一些候选人或党派到2008年将领会到这一点。美国政治中有一条铁律：能以最快的速度吸收并采用最新技术的政党将统领政治。弗兰克林。德兰诺。罗斯福因为广播和壁炉旁聊天而支配政治，约翰。 费茨杰拉德。肯尼迪以电视辩论著称，如今共和党成员主要借助无线电广播，布什总统的高级助手卡尔。罗夫则在邮件和计算机数据库方面处于领先地位。下一个具有技术性的政治模型将围绕社区力量和个人上传展开。在这个模型中，政府官员将不再只是试图听取众人意见或向众人发号施令。相反，他/ 她将成为连接众人的中心，他们协同工作，创建公众拥护者的网络来发现问题，解决问题并支持那些做得很好的候选人。拉西耶说，一个被选举出来的官员自己不能解决800万人的问题，但由800 万人口连成的网络能解决一个城市的问题。与官僚机构相比，他们能更好更快地发现问题，提供解决问题的方案。在21世纪，能够站在时代前沿的党派将成为多数党。民主党派成员更清楚到他们与网络脱节的情况最严重。 博客：上传新闻和评论在社区开发的软件运动获得迅速发展后，我们很快见证了另一种新型的自下而上的，自发组织的上传形式：博客。我所从事的新闻纸也让我对这一点看得最清楚。在这个空间中，唯一的在线评论员——博客主会根据自己的思想倾向选择和其他博客建立链接，并创立一种开放源的新闻室。博客就是你自己的虚拟肥皂箱，你每天早晨起来，可以用专栏、时事通讯或长篇大论的形式，告诉世界你对任一话题的想法，并将这一内容上传到自己的网站，等待世人的检验。如果其他人喜欢它，他们将从自己的博客链接到你的博客或链接到其他内容，比如在线的新闻文章或评论。现在我把阅读博客文章当成每日例行的收集信息的一部分（博客一词源于单词Weblog）。《华盛顿邮报》的霍华德。库特兹曾撰写过描述不知名的博客如何就“拉瑟门事件”在网上掀起轩然大波的文章（2004年9 月20日），“就好像在煤油浸过的木头上扔了一根火柴一样，随之而来的火焰迅速蔓延到整个媒体行业，以往不为人所知的博客现在让默罗和克朗凯特（美国新闻界泰斗）建立的传统新闻业处于被动境地。网站设计师和博客查尔斯。约翰逊说，其中的秘密就是'开放源信息采集'。也就是说，我们现在拥有一帮市民记者，他们会兴致勃勃地寻找各种新闻线索。”不过，这个记者队伍通常只配备有很简单的采访器材，如录音机和可拍照手机，但在平坦的世界里，他们的声音却可以传播到哥伦比亚广播公司和《纽约时报》那里。 这些博客已经创建了没有任何准入障碍的网上平民区，这些平民区通常会散布各种谣言和主观臆测。因为没人管理，各种行为标准差别很大，会有一些彻底不负责任的言论。但是也正因为没人管理，信息流动才会彻底畅通。而且这一社区有时也会报道一些真实的事情，比如“拉瑟门事件”，它可以像任何网络或主要的报纸一样报道一些客观公正的新闻。 Technorati网站负责跟踪不断更新的网络日志，它宣称，每7 秒钟就有一个新的博客诞生，现在已有2400万博客，其数量还在以每天增加7 万的速度递增，每隔5 个月，博客数量就要翻一番——以个人视角报道伊拉克前线新闻的博客、批评高尔夫球场建筑构造的博客、扑克博客、投资博客以及像你我一样普通的博客。 旧金山自由撰稿人马克。格拉瑟（Mark Glaser ）2005年7 月28号给YaleGlobal网站写的一篇文章提到，7 月7 日伦敦地铁发生爆炸的当天，BBC 网站邀请观众和听众发送一些他们见到的照片。24小时之内，该网站就收到了2 万份电子邮件书面纪录。1000张照片，20段视频。一位业余爱好者拍摄的双层汽车爆炸的照片成为当天该网站的主要图片之一。BBC 、《卫报》、MSNBC 的网站都是走平民记者道路的主流媒体网站，它们的读者即使没有接受过任何报道培训，也可以在短暂时间内为网站建设做出贡献。BBC 所做得只是驾驭上传的能力，将其转化为有用的编辑内容。 BBC 愿意欢迎博客，这一方面显示出博客的力量和弱点，另一方面也告诉我们为什么博客对传统媒体的影响目前尚无定论。谁能在24个小时内细细研读2 万份博客呢？这就像我们不能从灭火水龙带里喝水的道理一样。因此，和软件行业一样，我们很有可能看到的是更加混合的方式：传统的新闻机构吸收、筛选、从中选出最优的，然后将他们同传统方法编辑的新闻合为一体（如今，许多像通用电气这样的大公司每天都监控着博客对他们评论，并相应地做出回应）。10年后你认识的所有人几乎都拥有一个博客，很难想象那时是什么样子。可这就是我们的发展方向，如果你看一下Face book.com 现象，就会明白这一点。Face book.com 是高中和大学十分风靡的网上社交场所，数以百万计的年轻人利用这个平台讲述自己的故事。 研究科技与政治相互关系的分析师迈卡。西弗赖（Micah Sifry ）在2004年11月22日的《国家杂志》（The Nation）中写道，下一代人在网络环境中成长，而不是人到中年时才去适应这种环境。Grunwald Associates 2003年12月的研究显示，美国6~17岁的青少年拥有自己网站的人数超过200 万。幼儿园到3 年级的孩子中29% 拥有电子邮箱。乔希。凯标格（Josh Koenig ），在Dean大战中懂事的20个重要人物之一，现在是美国音乐（Music for America ）的一位创始人之一，他说我们只看到倾盆大雨的前几滴雨而已。他告诉我，在美国的大多数高中，学生们利用网站来给老师划分等级。 我认为这样有些夸张。但后来，我在“评价我的老师”（Rate My Teachers.com ） 网站上发现，4 万所美国和加拿大中学的学生对90万个老师作出了600 万项评价。 这一数字是上一年的3 倍，覆盖了两个国家85% 的学校。未来是这些学生的，我们剩下的人只能随波逐流了。 播客，也就是语音版的博客，刚刚出现。他随着苹果便携式音频播放器ipod的广泛流行而逐渐兴盛起来。播客的内容包括：个人制作的与自己有关的音频和视频的音乐文件、评论、书籍、诗歌朗诵、独奏会等任何你能想到的可以通过声音或视频上传到网络平台（如苹果iTunes）的东西。用户或订购者接着可以下载这些播客，然后通过电脑、iPod、MP3 播放器，手机或其他移动装置来听或者观看它们。播客给传统音像公司和广播电台正带来巨大冲击，毕竟有这么多人能成为视频和音乐的制造者，而不再仅仅是被动的听众和观众。 维基百科：社区上传内容我在写这本书时经常提到的另一种知识平民化性质的合作形式是维基百科（Wikipedia ），这是由用户贡献内容的网上百科全书，也被称作“人民的百科全书”。 “wikis ”在夏威夷语中是“快”的意思。这种网站让用户可以直接在家庭电脑上编辑网页。2004年5 月5 日，香港大学新闻及传媒研究中心的助理教授安德鲁。利赫在YaleGlobal网站上张贴了一篇论文，解释了维基百科的运作方式和它如此成功的原因，“维基百科是由Bomis.com 的总裁吉米。威尔士发起的。在此之前，他曾发起过一个虽属自愿创办但却处于严格控制下的百科全书项目，主编们都拥有博士学历，但他们只收集了几百篇文章，2 年后由于缺乏资金和资源，这个项目流产了。为了不让这些内容浪费掉，2001年1 月威尔士将这些文章贴到了一个wiki网站上，并且邀请访问者对之做出修改和增添新的内容。这个网站第一年就取得了很大成功，第二年也是如此，两年之内就汇集了2 万篇英文文章和12种语言以上的相关翻译。” 你也许会问，人们怎么通过公开来源、公开编辑的方式创建令人信服的大百科全书呢？事实上，维基百科中的每篇文章上都有一个“编辑此页”的按钮，让访客可以自己决定是添加还是删除该页。利赫解释说，由于wiki可以追踪文章的状况、查看访客的修改和就一些问题进行讨论，它们实际充当着“社会软件”的角色。wiki网站也可以查询和保留文章每次的修改状况，因此任何操作都不会造成永久性的破坏。维基百科在多数一致的原则下运作，用户在增添和修改内容的过程中也还努力达成共识。 利赫写道：“不过，技术本身是不足够的。吉米。威尔士的编辑原则是必须保持中立观点（NPOV）。 .维基百科的章程是，'中立观点意味着应努力让支持者和反对者都同意某种观点或事实……'因此关于全球化等争议问题的文章也得益于维基百科这种开放的全球属性。过去2 年中，'全球化'这一词目已经有90多种解释，参与者来自荷兰、比利时、英国、澳大利亚、巴西、美国、马来西亚、日本和中国。 其角度多样：从世界贸易组织和跨国公司到反全球化运动和对文化多元性的威胁。 与此同时，一些恶意的修改行为也会被遏制。对破坏行为进行监督和纠正也并不是什么难事，用户只需查看近期修改的清单就可在几分钟（甚至几秒钟）内发现这些破坏行为，然后点击按钮就可以回到破坏前的状态，这就比较有利于wiki社区对质量问题的掌控。 “2004年11月1 日一期的《新闻周刊》引用英国艾塞克斯一位维基百科迷（他曾对1000多个词条的正确性进行网上监督）的话说：”合著百科全书的想法也许是有些疯狂，但它的自控却很好。 " 他当然很受欢迎。到2005年底，维基百科每个月的页面浏览次数达到25万亿，这让他成为网上访问次数最高的参考类网站之一，类似的网站还有Dictionary.com。 我相信，在你成长的过程中，当大英百科全书的推销员敲开你的家门并向你炫耀这些书时，你肯定感觉他很棒。我当时自然也有这种感觉。然后，当你拿到微软电子百科全书的第一版本、并可以点击到自己的百科全书时，你的感觉也一定很爽。微软电子百科全书最新版本的网上广告如下：微软百科全书标准版2006是销量第一的百科全书品牌。这使你可以放心地勇于探索知识世界的资料来源，它包括3.6 万篇文章、上万张图片和声音剪辑、视频、动画、游戏、地图和更多的东西，这些内容既准确又吸引人，并且还紧跟时代潮流。你知道上传的百科全书——维基百科里有多少篇文章吗？ 我于2005年11月29日写下这些文字时，维基百科的网站这样报道：始于2001年的英语版本中，我们现在共有841358篇文章。吉米。威尔士才刚刚起步。他还将维基百科拓展到了字典和词典领域——维基字典；拓展到了数字课本和手册领域——维基书本；拓展到了网上引用语领域——维基引语；拓展到了物种的网络目录——维基物种；当然还有让你可以自由创作和上传的新闻内容——维基新闻。 不过，维基百科并不总是光鲜照人，它也不是总能实现自控。当人们上传自己的百科全书时，很多事情都会发生，而且并非所有的事情都是好事。你的敌人可能将它用作在全世界毁坏你名声的海报栏，这种情况通常需要大量时间才能解决。 老约翰。席根塔勒（John Seigenthaler Sr）是《今日美国》的主编，并且还是范德比尔特大学（Vanderbilt University ）自由论坛宪法第一修正案中心（First Amendment Center）的创始人。一天早晨，他醒来后发现，维基百科上这样描述自己：老约翰。席根塔勒在20世纪60年代初是总检察长罗伯特。肯尼迪的助手。 在一段很短的时间内，他被认为与肯尼迪两兄弟（约翰和鲍比）被刺案直接相关。 但是，至今没有任何事件证实。 他很不开心。这篇人物介绍在世界范围内被广泛阅读和拷贝。2005年11月29日，他在《今日美国》的公开版面写下了下面的话：这是一个在网上暗杀别人的故事，它也可能会发生在你身上。 我不知道是哪个有邪念的人构思了在我名下的这篇虚假而恶毒的传记，并把它在维基百科这个受人欢迎的在线免费百科全书上登载了132 天，而维基百科上文章的作者都是匿名的，因此很难被人发现。这篇传记写道：。约翰〃席根塔勒于1971年移居到了前苏联，并于1984年回到美国……维基百科这样说：。之后不久，他创办了一家公关公司，这家公司是全国最大的公关公司之一…… 在78岁的高龄，我以为任何有关我的负面消息都不再会令我吃惊或使我受到伤害，但是我错了。这篇传记中有一句话是真实的。20世纪60年代初，我是罗伯特〃肯尼迪的行政助理，同时也是他的护枢者。当我儿子小约翰〃席根塔勒（美国全国广播公司的新闻记者）后来给我打电话说，他在两家网站Reference.com和Answers.com 上发现同样卑劣的文章时，我感到难以臵信。 几个星期来，我从老师、记者和历史学家那里听说了。维基百科这个精彩的世界……成千上万世界各地的人每天访问这个网站，目的是要迅速获取参考事实。 但这个网站的内容却是由没有专业技能和知识的人（有时还是一些恶意的人）编写并粘贴上去的。 在我的要求下，三个网站的主管人员已经删除关于我的虚假内容，但是他们不知道，也查不出到底是谁写了这些恶毒的言辞。 我打电话给维基百科的创始人——吉米〃威尔士，问他，你……有办法知道是谁写的这些吗？ .不，我们没有办法……他说。另外两个网站的代表说，他们计算机的编程只能从维基百科上逐字复制数据，从不检查其内容的真伪…… 我们生活在一个全新的媒体世界之中，其中拥有在世界范围内交流和研究的宝贵的机会。 但是其成员中也有蓄意用笔中伤他人的知识分子，国会已经授予这些人权利并保护它们。 当我还是一个孩子的时候，妈妈教导我：说人闲话是罪恶的。她拿起一个塞满羽毛的枕头并说，如果我把枕头撕破，羽毛将会四处飞扬，我就再也不能将它们装回去了。而恶意中伤他人的行为，也是这样。 对于我来说，那个枕头就是对维基百科的暗喻。 我喜欢维基百科，在写作这本书的过程中我也曾使用过它。但在使用它的过程中，我很清楚，网络社区中的知识并不总是正确的。网络并不总是能自动纠错，并且其纠错的速度不及错误传播的速度。今天，IBM 专门有资深员工负责跟踪维基百科上有关IBM 的介绍，并且确保这些内容不存在虚假，这并不是什么偶然事件。在未来数年里，年轻人将更多地从维基百科而非IBM 自身获取有关后者的信息。 上传究竟要发展到什么地步？