Distinction Between Collaborative and Open

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 point 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.

Links

• Difference Between Crowd Sourced and Collaborative
• Fake Open Source