Global idea movement

Back in 2004 when I was considering doing an open source project I had many vague notions about why it would be a good idea, but now more than a decade later I can cheerfully say that my reason now for wild support is global idea movement. As I noted in my post on the 10 year anniversary of my project, it has been downloaded from over 150 countries, and could I have done that with a moneyed project?

Can you imagine trying to market a paid product in over 150 countries?

I guess Google and Facebook are learning. But even for them their base products are free: Google search, and well, Facebook.

And oddly enough Facebook came out the same month as my little app, and more power to them! I don't envy that Zuckerberg guy. But my ideas are in probably about as many countries as his.

I'll take that, thank you very much.

When it comes down to it, a few people can build a mega corporation that can handle all the issues of global marketing, production, development and sales, but many, many, many  more people can watch in awe as their open source project gets downloaded from all over the world.

So intriguingly, take the money out of it, and ideas can move--globally.

That's one of the greatest gifts of our modern web.

But then again, with the money involved they can as well. It kind of makes you wonder.

So it's kind of an interesting thing we can see in our time, which I think is remarkable--as in worth remarking upon.

And where better to remark than on my own blog where ideas rule?

But one does wonder...

Regardless I feel I can confidently say from my own experience that if you want to most easily have people all over the globe using something you developed then open source is clearly a way. For a paid product I'm sure you have a much bigger hill to climb.


James Harris