The democracy of Linux

Audience participation is becoming one of the key points in anything that is put online – let’s just think of comments on videos and posts, the famous user generated content, interactive websites, online games… and so on. What we sometimes forget to think of is the number of ‘open source’ programmes that can be found online: these programmes can be downloaded and then freely edited by any user, who can then share what they have developed with the rest of the community.

This is, roughly, how Linux was born: this operating system was initially created by Linus Torvalds, a software engineer, in 1991, and it was later distributed online for the users to develop.

Because of its high possibility of personalisation, it is widely used as OS by companies such as NASA; but what is interesting to know is that Android OS is based on the Linux kernel.

What is considered to be the audience/consumer by some actually becomes the “developer” in this case, and this allows the product to be more customised. Moreover, a whole community developing a software means that there is more creativity in solving problems.

Perhaps, we can see the chance of “joining in” as a sign of democracy.