Ubuntu' Philosophy: A Lesson for the Open Source Community

The success of Ubuntu Linux demonstrates the importance of a philosophy that the open source world has lacked for years. By envisioning a product that the world at large could use and enjoy, that “just works”, and by working to foster a community where new users are supported with kindness, Ubuntu has unequivocally become the most successful Linux distribution on the market. Other open source projects need to learn this valuable lesson, that writing software has a selfless and empathetic component, where the developer must learn to comprehend and fulfill his or her users’ needs.

I have personally tried to use open source software that failed to even compile, only to find out after research that the author has not only been aware of the bugs in his system, but has openly admitted that he has not fixed them because he finds the prospect uninteresting. I have witnessed new users flamed for incompetence by developers too blinded by arrogance to understand the user’s point of view. I have seen too many open source advocates with the belief that a person should have a firm technical background in programming, and that the concerns of users without that background should be ignored. If the open source paradigm is to succeed, this attitude towards software development must change completely. If we truly want to benefit the world by making our works available for public use, we cannot simply pick interesting problems to work on and then shove the results of our coding into the public domain. We need to do as the Ubuntu community does. We need to write software for human beings besides ourselves.

The Moral Consequences of the Internet

In terms of morality, the Internet’s greatest impact on our lives is the infinite expansion of choices laid before us that have broadened the scope of our moral agency. Never before has an individual been integrated so tightly with the world surrounding world, with limitless access to information and ever increasing modes of communication with others. The moral dangers posed by the Internet are not new; the evils that have suffused it have always existed. However, just as so much previously inaccessible good and wholesome knowledge has suddenly become available through it, so has so much filth and sullied media, previously hidden in dark corners away from the eye of society, suddenly become available with unprecedented ubiquity. The challenge for the future then, in terms of protecting ourselves and our children from the ills of the Internet, is simply to better learn how to make wise choices when using it, how to screen out the bad and discover the good. This should always be our focus when using the Internet and when discussing with our children how to do the same.