The Open Projects Net philosophy has several components. OPN exists to provide interactive services to projects and groups involved with "Open Source, Open Technology and Open Information." We work to provide an interaction environment in which free software community members can improve their skills in the areas of communication and coordination of effort. We also try to provide an environment which serves to introduce new participants to the free software community.

The basic principles of OPN are:

• Community members benefit from better access to each other. Putting a number of projects in close proximity in an interactive environment creates linkages between developers and projects, and helps community members take better advantage of each other's work.
  
  
• Communication and coordination skills are important to community projects. Free software and open source work because the paradigm works. Developers and community members are not unusually gifted at project coordination and communication. But improving those skills can make projects work better.
  
  
• Friendly interaction is more efficient than flaming. Calm, relaxed discourse without angry contention provides for better exchange of information. Flaming produces situations in which the listener must contend with the state of his or her emotions at least as much as with the comprehension of a speaker's comments.
  
  
• Open source developers are self-driven. No one guarantees your work will be used, but only you decide whether a project is worth doing. There is no single right approach to any coding or support problem, and friendly competition is a fundamentally good thing.
  
  
• The free software community is small, and needs to grow. Many valuable projects chronically lack skilled, motivated developers with time to devote to them. Our potential developer base includes programmers in all fields and disciplines, and both students and working professionals. Our potential user base includes individuals and organizations standing to benefit from software projects we successfully pursue. The community must continue to grow.
  
  
• Free software is about the software. Free software and open source were not born in the recent venture-capital, pre-IPO environment. Our roots are in coders coding software for the benefit of themselves and their organizations, and for the pleasure of producing quality work. It is completely legitimate to profit monetarily from coding and supporting free and open applications. Corporate sponsors of open source projects are welcome on OPN. It's time, though, for the community to get back to its roots.
  
  

Copyright © 2001-2002 Open Projects Network.
Current network date and approximate time: Friday, 14-Jun-2002 23:44:00 GMT.
.