Swik- Combining The Might Of Web 2.0 To The Benefits Of Open Source Movement

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There are two ways to survive in this competitive world. One- grab whatever you can, make it yours and enjoy it by refusing it to share with others. Two- learn to share with others to live a life with security and dignity. The latter option is best symbolized by open source software applications.

In a world where information and knowledge is being copyrighted to prevent others from taking advantage of it, open source software applications belong to nobody and yet they belong to everybody. The source code of these software applications is known to all. Anyone can make any changes to improve the software. The only condition is that the changed software too must be made available as open source software. Mozilla Firefox and Open Office are the best examples of open source software.

If you want to find particular open source software, the best site to visit is Swik. The best way to describe this site is to call it a combination of Digg, Netscape and Wiki.

Any person who has made a software application and who wants to promote it as open source software can submit information related to the software on the site. The surfers of the web can check out the software and give their opinion on the software. A large number of positive votes will result in a high ranking for the software. On the other hand, many negative votes will tell the programmer that a bit more effort is required before the software can be made available for distribution.

In pursuance with the true spirit of open source movement, the programmer will enjoy benefits of numerous tips, advice and criticisms that can be used to improve the software.

The site is a hotbed of intense discussion on open source software. Users can search for various software projects by their titles or their tags. Those who are seeking documentation related to particular open source software are like to find a link for the same on this site. If Swik does not know about a particular project, it will even be prepared to hazard a guess to help you locate the information being sought.

Swik combines Web 2.0 with the open source movement to create a huge resource base which can be used by all surfers to enhance their computing experience. Andy Updegrove probably says it best with his quote ‘Sourceforge + Wikipedia = Swik’

The knowledge factor has been stressed a lot as far as Swik is concerned. Such forums enable the brightest to come together and genuinely work towards better software applications. Rather than limiting knowledge, such discussion and voting forums for open source projects actually spreads knowledge about such projects to those who were not aware of it in the past.

A core ideal of the open source movement is transparency. Swik has taken this to heart and is completely transparent about all changes made to the contents of the website. You can check out the history of changes made and also the progress being made on a particular project in real time as each and every change is recorded and documented for future reference.

Ashley sums it up by describing swik as ‘it’s just for anything related with Open Source projects.”

For more info on web2.0,click here

For more information about the open source movement, click here

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