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Although Mandel spent a good chuck of his presentation going over the long list of features XBMC has to offer I’m sure that was not the heart of his talk. Mandel was simply giving us an example of what the open source community can accomplish. XBMC along with other great open source software is the epitome of why developers participate in projects like these. People everywhere have the opportunity to use free software that will be life changing, if only in the smallest way.
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The greatest difference I noticed between these two speakers is that Hoye did not speak about the open source products he developed nor any other open source product. He spoke about what open source can do for you. On the contrary Mandel focused his presentation on one open source product and spoke about what you can do with it. Although Mandel did not explicitly talk about how great open source software is and encourage his audience to get involved and give back to the community it is quite clear that he is a supporter of it.
Mandel gave an example of how a piece of the open source community has innovated the way we view our TV. He gave us an example of how open source can change our lives from an entertainment perspective. On the other hand Hoye gave us an example of how open source can change our lives from a business and professional level. Mandel and Hoye’s talks were completely different but they go hand in hand. Hoye spoke about how to go about developing a successful product that takes advantage of the open source community while Mandel gave us a great example of what such a product may be. Both Mandel and Hoye see open source software as an opportunity but given the context of their presentations maybe have a different idea what that opportunity is. Hoye saw an opportunity to start a successful business and make money. Mandel saw an opportunity to make the entertainment factor in his life a little bit sweeter.
I think there is a big misconception about open source software which is that it just doesn’t measure up to closed source software. I think a lot of people associate open source software with having lots of bugs and sub-standard capabilities. I also think that open source software flies under the radar and doesn’t receive the praise it deserves. This of course goes for the open source developers as well. There are millions of users who use and download free software and probably don’t realize that there is a community of developers working hard to provide free solutions. When something is free it is easy to forget about how much time and effort went into making it what it is. Just because something is free doesn’t mean it was easy to do. And just because a piece of software has a small bug doesn’t give a user reason to discredit it completely. FSOSS is great way to give the software and developers the credit they deserve. It reminds users and educates new users of how an open community can accomplish great things. It also reminds and educates us on the amount and wide array of resources, whether this be information, assistance, sense of community, add-ons, plug-ins, new releases, better versions, etc. that the open source community has to offer. Listening to Hoye and Mandel speak about what open source has done for them reminded me of those exact things.
