Open Source Technology needs guidelines in development cooperation
Open technologies are characterized by transparency, participation and cooperation. They enable the user to understand how they work and offer the opportunity to participate in (further) development, design or overall management.
Open technologies include:
Open Data is data whose access, use, dissemination and exploitation are free of charge. Often open data is administrative data such as statistics, environmental, weather, traffic, and financial data. Open data is of public interest and potential benefit. They can therefore promote transparency, participation and knowledge and support social and economic value creation.
In Open innovations product development and innovation processes are opened up and knowledge and innovative ideas from outside are strategically used to increase the innovation potential. The idea behind this is to make innovation more targeted by combining internal and external competencies.
Open Standards ensure interoperability and easy data exchange between different services and products. They are publicly accessible, are (further) developed collaboratively and are easy to use.
Open Manufacturing or Open Production describes the collaborative creation of physical products, which are mostly based on open source and open design principles. These can be, for example, medical products, spare parts or prototypes of all kinds.
Open Source Software (OSS) has a freely available source code, which is usually free of charge and can be used, viewed, checked and adapted to one’s own needs. The use of OSS offers many possibilities, which are explained in the articles below.
Especially in development cooperation, open technologies can often be a more sustainable alternative. They also help to successfully implement the Principles for Digital Development. Principles for Digital Developments provide an orientation guide to help use these digital technologies successfully.
- Principle 1 “Design With the User” and Principle 2 “Understand the Existing Ecosystem” are general prerequisites, but particularly important for Open Innovations.
- The GovStack Initiative follows Principle 3 “Design for Scale” in particular and uses once developed software modules also in other regions and contexts.
- Principle 6 “Use Open Standards, Open Data, Open Source, and Open Innovation” recommends an open approach to encourage cooperation and avoid duplication of work.
- One of the underlying principles of Open Source Software complies with Digital Principle 7 “Reuse and Improve“: reuse existing software and develop it further together.
- Principle 9 “Be Collaborative” is the basis for the joint creation of objects in Open Manufacturing.
The Digital Principles community plays a key role in ensuring the Principles fort he use of open source technology. Through their experience, reasons for failure cam be avoided.
