I am a self professed Android fan-boy/evangelist, and for many reasons. The most important reason being that its ‘Open Source‘ a term that conjures up lovely images of the unix shell which subject normal people to grief and torment. Clearly a misunderstood term, the best definition I’ve seen for it so far is “Publicly shared intellectual property“. Even this description itself fails to describe what is otherwise a movement or revolution. Tim O’Reilly accurately predicted this paradigm shift in 2004.

I am the proud owner of a new Samsung Galaxy, a phone which by all measures puts an iPhone to shame (fire away). The platform it runs on, ‘Android‘ is one that puts the power back in the hands of everybody – the consumers, the hardware manufacturers and even the telco’s (yes!). Everybody’s happy?? Impossible? Hardware manufacturers can focus on what they do best since the software is free. Telco’s can offer multiple options while streamlining support… and consumers reap the benefit of price and function.

The Samsung Galaxy came out with a few flaws – its not a perfect phone. The GPS acted erratic and the apps were slow. Within a few days however, the community had a patch for the problem – Collaboration.

“Examples of collaborative practices can be found in art and in software engineering. They offer an alternative model in which innovation is achieved through the active participation of all parties. Ideas and products are no longer developed in a closed production process organized around the autonomy of the artist or the company, but evolve out of the pragmatism of usage. That is the motor of innovation.”
Dennis Kaspori