Hi

I am developing a substantial business idea that uses the "social
network" model.

Can any of you guys recommend any (preferrably short) required reading
on this subject?

I want to know more about the human psychology involved...

e.g.
For example, how do Open Source developments like Linux work?
What motivates people to contribute?
How are the heirachies of user-rights set up?
How are things 'moderated'?
How are disputed resolved?
And what about wikipedia - is that based on the same principles?


So... what books or white papers should I read to get an over-view of
the principles involved?

With thanks


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

On Feb 22, 2:40 pm, ship <ship...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am developing a substantial business idea that uses the "social
> network" model.
>
> Can any of you guys recommend any (preferrably short) required reading
> on this subject?
>
> I want to know more about the human psychology involved...
>
> e.g.
> For example, how do Open Source developments like Linux work?
> What motivates people to contribute?
> How are the heirachies of user-rights set up?
> How are things 'moderated'?
> How are disputed resolved?
> And what about wikipedia - is that based on the same principles?
>
> So... what books or white papers should I read to get an over-view of
> the principles involved?
>
> With thanks
>
> Ship
> Shiperton Henethe

Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the
power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The
promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more
flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit corporation formed to
educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to
build bridges among different constituencies in the open-source
community.
One of our most important activities is as a standards body,
maintaining the Open Source Definition for the good of the community.
The Open Source Initiative Approved License trademark and program
creates a nexus of trust around which developers, users, corporations
and governments can organize open-source cooperation.
http://www.opensource.org/

About Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About

Wikipedia uses MediaWiki, a wiki package originally written for
Wikipedia, that is now used by several other projects of the Wikimedia
Foundation and by many other wikis around the World.
Official WebSite:
http://www.mediawiki.org/

************************************************** **
Kind Regards:
1001webs.net
http://www.1001webs.net/en/cms/mediawiki_en.htm
************************************************** **

ship wrote:

> I am developing a substantial business idea that uses the "social
> network" model.

> What motivates people to contribute?

Something more than just the fact that it is a social network. If I
want to be part of a social network just for the sake of it, there are
plenty already. If you want to set up something that attracts users,
you'll need to give them a value that's there before they start making
friends within that network.

--
Els http://locusmeus.com/

On 22 Feb 2008 ship wrote in alt.www.webmaster

> What motivates people to contribute?

Sex and free beer.

--
D?

On Feb 22, 2:31pm, Els <els.aNOS...@tiscali.nl> wrote:
> ship wrote:
> > I am developing a substantial business idea that uses the "social
> > network" model.
> > What motivates people to contribute?
>
> Something more than just the fact that it is a social network. If I
> want to be part of a social network just for the sake of it, there are
> plenty already. If you want to set up something that attracts users,
> you'll need to give them a value that's there before they start making
> friends within that network.

Yes I've got the base covered of why people would join as normal
users.
But I am intrigued by the management of the likes of Wikipedia and
Open Source.
Is anyone in either organisation actually paid money?


Ship

On Feb 22, 2:28pm, 1001 Webs <1001w...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 22, 2:40 pm, ship <ship...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi
>
> > I am developing a substantial business idea that uses the "social
> > network" model.
>
> > Can any of you guys recommend any (preferrably short) required reading
> > on this subject?
>
> > I want to know more about the human psychology involved...
>
> > e.g.
> > For example, how do Open Source developments like Linux work?
> > What motivates people to contribute?
> > How are the heirachies of user-rights set up?
> > How are things 'moderated'?
> > How are disputed resolved?
> > And what about wikipedia - is that based on the same principles?
>
> > So... what books or white papers should I read to get an over-view of
> > the principles involved?
>
> > With thanks
>
> > Ship
> >ShipertonHenethe
>
> Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the
> power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The
> promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more
> flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.
> The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit corporation formed to
> educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to
> build bridges among different constituencies in the open-source
> community.
> One of our most important activities is as a standards body,
> maintaining the Open Source Definition for the good of the community.
> The Open Source Initiative Approved License trademark and program
> creates a nexus of trust around which developers, users, corporations
> and governments can organize open-source cooperation.http://www.opensource..org/
>
> About Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About
>
> Wikipedia uses MediaWiki, a wiki package originally written for
> Wikipedia, that is now used by several other projects of the Wikimedia
> Foundation and by many other wikis around the World.
> Official WebSite:http://www.mediawiki.org/
>
> ************************************************** **
> Kind Regards:
> 1001webs.nethttp://www.1001webs.net/en/cms/mediawiki_en.htm
> ************************************************** **- Hide quoted text -

Thanks some useful links, right enough.

But it says more about WHAT those organisations do than WHY anyone
would bother to contribute - particularly the managers & moderators
particularly if it starts taking up a lot of time and particularly if
they not paid a bean!

I mean what do these guy live off?
Is it all done in their spare time?
Or is it done sneakily during office hours which are paid for by
someone else.
i.e. How does it work in practice ?!

Ship

Duende wrote:

> On 22 Feb 2008 ship wrote in alt.www.webmaster
>
>> What motivates people to contribute?
>
> Sex and free beer.

Free sex is even better. I can afford beer.


--
Blinky
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org
Blinky: http://blinkynet.net

Blinky the Shark wrote:
> Duende wrote:
>
>> On 22 Feb 2008 ship wrote in alt.www.webmaster
>>
>>> What motivates people to contribute?
>> Sex and free beer.
>
> Free sex is even better. I can afford beer.
>
>

There is no such thing as free sex.

Just pay a prostitute. Or better yet, just offer free room and board to
a cute gal. Either is cheaper than marriage - and definitely cheaper
than divorce if you need to get rid of them :-)

And what you find otherwise may be a lot more expensive :-)

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

Jerry Stuckle wrote:

> Blinky the Shark wrote:
>> Duende wrote:
>>
>>> On 22 Feb 2008 ship wrote in alt.www.webmaster
>>>
>>>> What motivates people to contribute?
>>> Sex and free beer.
>>
>> Free sex is even better. I can afford beer.
>>
>>
>>
> There is no such thing as free sex.

I knew there was a catch.

> Just pay a prostitute.

I can't imagine doing that.

> Or better yet, just offer free room and board to a cute gal. Either is
> cheaper than marriage - and definitely cheaper than divorce if you need
> to get rid of them :-)

I was married three times before I retired (from all that, I mean).

> And what you find otherwise may be a lot more expensive :-)




--
Blinky
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org
Blinky: http://blinkynet.net

On Feb 22, 11:26pm, ship <ship...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 22, 2:31pm, Els <els.aNOS...@tiscali.nl> wrote:
>
> > ship wrote:
> > > I am developing a substantial business idea that uses the "social
> > > network" model.
> > > What motivates people to contribute?
>
> > Something more than just the fact that it is a social network. If I
> > want to be part of a social network just for the sake of it, there are
> > plenty already. If you want to set up something that attracts users,
> > you'll need to give them a value that's there before they start making
> > friends within that network.
>
> Yes I've got the base covered of why people would join as normal
> users.
> But I am intrigued by the management of the likes of Wikipedia and
> Open Source.
> Is anyone in either organisation actually paid money?

According to Wikipedia:
Funding of Open Source software:
"The funding of Open Source software by people and organizations
implies that there must be some benefit to the funder beyond the
production of the open source software itself."

The following table summarizes some of the funding sources for Open
Source development and the possible motivation for the funding:
- Independent Developers: Provide development time.
- Commercial companies: Provide development time.Provide
infrastructure (bandwidth, source management and web hosting
services). For example: SourceForge that hosts tens of thousands of
Open Source projects or IBM that hosts the Eclipse project.
- Venture Capital Companies: Provide funding. Provide management
advice.
- Governments/Public Authorities: Provide funding.
Get tax reductions. Donations to open source charities (e.g. SPI) are
tax-deductible in some countries.
- Private users: Provide funds either directly to developers or
through sites such as:
SourceForge that allows users to donate to specific projects or even
specific developers.
SPI that funds a set of open source projects

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_so...unding_sources

The Business and Economics of Linux and Open Source
- By Martin Fink:
http://books.google.com/books?id=nKU...ciqg0NSBrqcNIs

************************************************** *********************
Kind Regards,

Rafael Minuesa,
1001webs.net - Open Source Content Management Systems
http://www.1001webs.net/en/hosting_en.html#CMS
************************************************** *********************

ship <shiphen@gmail.com> wrote:

>Hi
>
>I am developing a substantial business idea that uses the "social
>network" model.
>
>Can any of you guys recommend any (preferrably short) required reading
>on this subject?
>
>I want to know more about the human psychology involved...
>

It's called "vanity publishing". People love talking about themselves,
and even more seeing their name (or alias) in print.

Matt

--
The Probert Encyclopaedia
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

ship <shiphen@gmail.com> wrote:

>But it says more about WHAT those organisations do than WHY anyone
>would bother to contribute - particularly the managers & moderators
>particularly if it starts taking up a lot of time and particularly if
>they not paid a bean!

Ego, ego, ego.

Matt


--
The Probert Encyclopaedia
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

ship <shiphen@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Feb 22, 2:31=A0pm, Els <els.aNOS...@tiscali.nl> wrote:
>> ship wrote:
>> > I am developing a substantial business idea that uses the "social
>> > network" model.
>> > What motivates people to contribute?
>>
>> Something more than just the fact that it is a social network. If I
>> want to be part of a social network just for the sake of it, there are
>> plenty already. If you want to set up something that attracts users,
>> you'll need to give them a value that's there before they start making
>> friends within that network.
>
>Yes I've got the base covered of why people would join as normal
>users.
>But I am intrigued by the management of the likes of Wikipedia and
>Open Source.
>Is anyone in either organisation actually paid money?
>

You really should delve a little deeper. NOTHING especially in
software is FREE.

Ever wondered why supermarkets sell products below cost price?

Matt


--
The Probert Encyclopaedia
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

> >Yes I've got the base covered of why people would join as normal
> >users.
> >But I am intrigued by the management of the likes of Wikipedia and
> >Open Source.
> >Is anyone in either organisation actually paid money?
>
> You really should delve a little deeper. NOTHING especially in
> software is FREE.

Well, I'm sure you are correct - but can you enlighten me?
What is the inside track on all this?

I guess *ego* is the primary driver - getting to feel good about
yourself
because you are doing well, and are respected by a bunch of guys (just
guys, btw??)
who you respect as being good at what they do...?

Also *learning* - learning hints and tips along the way. Getting to
feel plugged in to what's going on out there...?

A sense of *belonging* and community? - but that's dangerously close
to 'ego'... i.e. ultimately it's people's insecurities that are the
driver for them
doing potentially/collectively a huge amount of work for effectively
nothing.
Well, no material gain anyhow.

Or is it an ideological thing - e.g. "We all hate western capitalism
and Micro$oft" ?

Okay but here's the rub. If I were a kind of humble person who is
pretty
well-balanced and broadly happy with myself... and with quite a good
social life...
why would I bother with contributing to one of these communities?
i.e. Just how many hours per week would I even think about
contributing?

So are we really saying that entire Open Source movement is really
only of any interest to
needy people who have in effect something wrong with them?
e.g. An ego that needs massage / technical knowledge that need
boosting / a social life that is missing
and/or some weird communism-based belief system... ??

My instincts are that this is unlikely. I simply cant believe that
something a noble as the Open Source can
be based on such human weakness - tell me I'm wrong about all this!

> Ever wondered why supermarkets sell products below cost price?

Yes. My understanding is that it's called a "loss leader".
It gets people through the door, preferrably to buy KVIs (Known Value
Items) - items whose value people already think they
know BEFORE they go through the door, that leads the customers to
think that they are getting fantastic value for money
(which they are) but then whilst they are there, enough of them go and
something stupidly expensive and the supermarket
makes its margin after all. Alternatively sometimes a loss leader it
can be caused primarily by a simple glut of a product.
Over production - someone somewhere screwed up and the market now has
the need to dump something... particularly
just before its shelf life expires.

....am I close? If so, sorry but I still dont see the relevance!


Meanwhile, can anyone give me any tips about how to structure a
community of users?
Tiering? VIPs? Inner Sanctums?

I intend to have a traditional commercial company structure running
the website,
but the site itself will mainly consist of user-supplied content.

With thanks & humility


Ship
(OP)

On 23 Feb 2008 ship wrote in alt.www.webmaster

> because you are doing well, and are respected by a bunch of guys

Say what???

--
D?

On Feb 23, 10:07pm, Duende <mutb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 23 Feb 2008 ship wrote in alt.www.webmaster
>
> > because you are doing well, and are respected by a bunch of guys
>
> Say what???
>
> --
> D?

Correction. Try:

> because you THINK you are doing and because you THINK you are respected by....


Ship

On 22 Feb, 13:40, ship <ship...@gmail.com> wrote:

> For example, how do Open Source developments like Linux work?

"Linux" isn't a single "development" (certainly not an open source
one) it's a whole bunch of them. Each of these individual developments
is quite independent and doesn't really talk much to the other
developments. Some of these developments are purely unpaid voluntary
work for the love of it, some are "foreigners" done by people paid to
warm a desk for other purposes, some are commercial development work
that finds itself published under an open source licence. Open source
does _not_ mean that there's no commercial involvement in a project!
Just look at JBoss, or many other serious bits of commercial product
where their end-user licence is open-source (to varying extents).

There's no single "Linux" any more and there hasn't been for some
years. It's too big now - there's no real overall control of the broad
topic.

At most there's a number of "distro" projects, such as Ubuntu, RedHat,
SuSe etc. At the level of the distro, there's a lot more commercial
involvement in the project Someone, with money invested, has their
arse on the line to make the package appear on time and to work when
it does so. They then have to herd cats to make this happen. Some of
these overall distro packages are purely open source and distinctly
charitable (Ubuntu), some are still open source but are closely tied
to a fee-based commercial model (RedHat).

At the level of the project (a chunk of work small enough to retain
some conceptual direction) then this can either be one person's work,
a loose team, a big loose team with a small committed management core
or something else. Generally the useful well-defined products that
work well are one or two persons' work (or vision, or mostly a handful
of peoples'). The vapourware that duplicates another well-known
product, promises some tasty feature that never ships, and never
really has the bugs shaken out is usually the product of a well-
intentioned but unmotivated "team" that happened to fall into the same
place on SourceForge. Only rarely (e.g. Firefox) is a big team ever
managed or motivated to deliver something that's too big for one, yet
actually happens for real. Sadly this is a rare state for open source
projects.


> What motivates people to contribute?

Generally because you couldn't shut them up if you tried. Geeks make
code, they just do this. Open source doesn't cause geeks to make code,
it doesn't much change the code they make, it just changes what
happens to it after they've made it. Before commonplace open source,
geeks wrote the same stuff and were pleased if someone from the next-
door office used it, or they made enough from $5 shareware to pay for
the postage. Nowadays the default is that it gets open sourced and
everyone has the option to take a look.

Open source as a distribution mechanism is still _far_ more common
than the "many eyeballs" model of devleopment.


> And what about wikipedia - is that based on the same principles?

Wikipedia is different. On Wikipedia, the project is the "page", or
sometimes the project-based small set of pages. This is small enough
that single people can often build a whole page entirely from scratch
and bring it to fruition. For that reason, Wikipedia manages to make
effective use of a vast "team" of wikipedians, without having anything
in the way of overall project management (it has editorial control,
but that only filters, it doesn't motivate). Software development just
hasn't worked the way Wikipedia has. Many of Wikipedia's best pages
are almost solo efforts, some of the worst pages ("duck typing")
failed because there's no overall management or direction.


> So... what books or white papers should I read to get an over-view of
> the principles involved?

Hard to recommend anything that isn't out of date already. Hard to
recommend many of the others, because if you didn't read them years
ago when they were fresh, you're already so far behind you're going to
have a nightmare catching up. Certainly you need to have read plenty
by Eric S Raymond ("Cathedral and the Bazaar" is the obvious starter,
Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Lessig, the foundation documents for
Creative Commons, Wikimedia (NB Wiki_m_edia the foundation, not just
Wikipedia the project). Not to mention the licences themselves, like
GPL (and variants), Apache, CC-by-sa etc. and to appreciate the
distinctions between them. There are some more academic studies too,
especially on user communities, notions of shared value or reward
within them (HP Labs have published on this).

On 22 Feb, 13:40, ship <ship...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am developing a substantial business idea that uses the "social
> network" model.

What does "Social networking" (as it's currently practised in the
wacky world of Web 2.0) have to do with open source software?

ship wrote:

> I mean what do these guy live off?
> Is it all done in their spare time?
> Or is it done sneakily during office hours which are paid for by someone
> else.
> i.e. How does it work in practice ?!

All/none of the above.

But not all open source development is done out of the goodness of
people's hearts (although a lot is). There are many thousands of people
paid to work part or full time on open source projects:

* Hardware companies who finance the development of
drivers for the Linux kernel;

* Companies like MySQL AB (recently bought by Sun) who
sell support and commercial licences for MySQL and have
the primary developers as full-time staff;

* Non-profit organisations like the Mozilla Foudation
fund the primary developers of Mozilla;

* Some companies fund open source projects because they
get great value from *using* the software (e.g. Apache
is funded in part by Yahoo and HP; PostgreSQL receives
sponsorship from Fujitsu). Putting their money and
developers into the open source project s them
get *their* feature requests addressed as a matter of
priority.

* Governments sometimes sponsor open source development
for similar reasons. (e.g. the US NSA developed SELinux,
a security-enhancement patch for Linux, which has now
been integrated into the official kernel.)

There are many different reasons people contribute to open source
projects: perhaps for as a hobby; maybe as a learning experience; or just
because they need a particular enhancement made to a tool and nobody else
was willing to do it. But it would be wrong to always assume that they're
not getting paid to do it.

Further reading:
_The Catherdral & the Bazaar_, Eric S Raymond,

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 26 days, 18:03.]

Bottled Water
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2008/02/18/bottled-water/

Toby A Inkster wrote:
>
> * Some companies fund open source projects because they
> get great value from *using* the software (e.g. Apache
> is funded in part by Yahoo

I wonder what will change if MS buys yahoo?

--
Berg

Bergamot wrote:

> Toby A Inkster wrote:
>>
>> * Some companies fund open source projects because they
>> get great value from *using* the software (e.g. Apache
>> is funded in part by Yahoo
>
> I wonder what will change if MS buys yahoo?

I won't be using Yahoo as my portal page any more.


--
Blinky
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org
Blinky: http://blinkynet.net

Blinky the Shark <no.spam@box.invalid> wrote in message:
pan.2008.02.26.20.24.44.256039@thurston.blinkynet. net,

> Bergamot wrote:
>> I wonder what will change if MS buys yahoo?
>
> I won't be using Yahoo as my portal page any more.

You won't have to change right away. It'll take Microsoft a little while
to screw it up. :-)

--
Red

Red E. Kilowatt wrote:

> Blinky the Shark <no.spam@box.invalid> wrote in message:
> pan.2008.02.26.20.24.44.256039@thurston.blinkynet. net,
>
>> Bergamot wrote:
>>> I wonder what will change if MS buys yahoo?
>>
>> I won't be using Yahoo as my portal page any more.
>
> You won't have to change right away. It'll take Microsoft a little while
> to screw it up. :-)

Suuuuure it will. But anyway, that's irrelevant; I'll switch because
it's MS, not because it's been upfucked.


--
Blinky
Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org
Blinky: http://blinkynet.net

Bergamot wrote:
> Toby A Inkster wrote:
>>
>> * Some companies fund open source projects because they
>> get great value from *using* the software (e.g. Apache is
>> funded in part by Yahoo
>
> I wonder what will change if MS buys yahoo?

If Yahoo are bought out by MS, it will be an unmitigated disaster for both
companies. I'd half like to see this deal go ahead just for the amusement
factor.

Yahoo are an almost entirely PHP and Apache on Linux and FreeBSD shop. It
clearly works for them, but to run services on an open source platform
would not fit in with Microsoft's corporate culture. If it were just PHP,
they'd probably cope with it -- Microsoft provides hosting for Phlanger, a
port of PHP to .NET, and their IIS team have been making efforts to make
the PHP+IIS combo work a lot better than it used to. FreeBSD they might
even be able to deal with. But Apache -- the main competitor to money-
spinner IIS; and Linux with its "evil viral" licence: not on your nelly!

So they'd certainly port them all over to Windows, IIS and .NET. Look at
what they did to Hotmail back in the 1990s [1]. That took them years to
sort out -- Windows NT and IIS simply weren't up to the task. (It was
ultimately to their advantage though. Feedback from the Hotmail team led
to many improvements in Windows 2000.) Yahoo's portfolio is far greater
than Hotmail though. They have the webmail service; YahooGroups (nee
eGroups.com); directory and search engine; news service; Flikr; blogs;
chat; games... The whole effort will be a year or two of the MSN and Yahoo
teams porting and integrating. No new features: just beta versions of
stuff the customers were sure they already had.

Whatsmore, after a merger like that there would be bound to be job cuts.
Any Yahoo employees with half a brain would be keeping an eye on the job
market. Google, eBay, Myspace and Amazon would have rich pickings in the
headhunting game. All the decent employees would find work elsewhere and
Microsoft would just end up with those people without the intelligence or
ambition to look for another job.

____
1. http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 28 days, 15:47.]

Bottled Water
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2008/02/18/bottled-water/