Distinction Between Collaborative and Open

Collaborative and Open Are Not the Same Thing

Collaborative is not necessarily open source, and open source is not necessarily collaborative.

Example of former: a company funds a collaborative design effort, then privatizes the results.

Example of latter: a project publishes resulting plans under an open license, but the development process is carried on by one or few people with no external input. This situation is very common. Such a project is not collaborative during the design phase, but may become more collaborative once the plans are published. From the standpoint of leveraging potential crowd contribution, this method has limited results - and is pointed out to address for more effective collaboration. Typical reason for not engaging in collaboration in the early phase may be Collaborative Waste - ie, it takes effort to keep 'paperwork'. It may also be psychological - a person may not be comfortable with being vulnerable to critique, or the person may be fearful. This gets into psychological issues of a Scarcity Mindset vs Abundance Mindset.

More

Collaborative means done in a way that allows any other qualified developer to contribute to a project, with minimal friction in the process.

Open source means that which follows the OSHWA Definition. See Open Source.

Many technologies that are open source are not developed collaboratively. The typical model is: a small team develops, and releases when done. There are 2 issues with this: (1) design is not generated in a truly collaborative way. 2 - since a project is 'never done', collaboration from the onset is more likely to produce a working product at all. If open source does not value collaboration over open publishing, it may have limited impact

Outside of usual open source project, the City of Encinitas ADU is a great example of an open resource that is developed non-collaboratively.

Many 'collaboratively' developed technologies, such as projects on HeroX or Local Motors are not open source.

Many technologies for collaboration (such as Google Slides) are not developed collaboratively, and are not open source. They may be free, but they are missing the 4 Freedoms of Open Source.

In summary - open source AND collaborative are not the same thing. OSE emphasizes open source AND collaborive as a prerequisite to solving Pressing World Issues - and thus requires both aspects to be present in order for fruitful collaboration to exist.

Links

• Difference Between Crowd Sourced and Collaborative
• Levels of Open. Find out about many shades of open, from true to Fake Open Source or worse.