The community that has long powered Opensource.com is hard at work on something new. Regular visitors to the publication may have recently noticed a noticeable quietude across the site’s digital pages. That relative silence is not a sign of winding down, but rather the precursor to a significant transition. A brand-new project is currently in the works behind the scenes. While organizers note that there are not yet many specific details to announce to the public, there is already plenty to discuss regarding the platform’s trajectory, its foundational values, and the broader ecosystem it serves. And what better way to start a conversation about networks, connections, and community than by looking at the entire internet itself?
The Internet, and Top-Level Domains
To understand where the Opensource.com community is heading, it helps to examine where the digital landscape began. Most internet users know that the internet is fundamentally a network. By definition, a network is a group of interconnected connections. In fact, the very term "internet" is a portmanteau combining the concepts of "interconnected" and "network."
In its earliest conceptualization and implementation, the internet consisted of just two primary networks: a military network and an academic network. These closed environments served specialized groups of researchers, defense personnel, and engineers. However, once the internet began to catch on and gain popularity outside of those two initial enclaves, it rapidly became apparent that different designations were necessary to keep track of various entities. Society needed a way to differentiate, for example, a commercial enterprise from a charitable organization, a university from a governmental department.
These critical designations are known as top-level domains, or TLDs. Today, there is a vast and diverse marketplace of TLDs available to web administrators, ranging from industry-specific suffixes to geographic identifiers. However, for a long time, there were only a handful of original designations anchoring the early web. These original TLDs remain remarkably popular and culturally embedded in how we navigate cyberspace. Most internet users intuitively understand that when they visit a web address ending in .com, they are visiting a commercial site, whereas a visit to a .org address typically indicates a non-profit organization, and .edu or .gov point toward educational and governmental institutions respectively. These suffixes were designed to reflect the underlying nature of the entities operating behind the screen.
Open Source Is a Network
Just as the internet relies on a sprawling architecture of connections, the open source movement is, at its core, a network. Open source can manifest in many different ways and serve many different functions. It can be commercial, driving enterprise software and cloud infrastructure. It can be non-profit, supporting public-interest technology and open standards. It can be academic, fostering research and collaborative experimentation. It can also be cultural, shaping how artists, writers, and creators share their work with the world.
No matter what specific form open source takes, or what industry it touches, it is always a network. Sometimes—though certainly not always—that network is composed of physical computers, servers, and repositories sharing code across the globe. But most importantly and fundamentally, open source is a network of people.
Whether those individuals are gathering physically at an international conference, informally at a local pub after hours, or synchronously and asynchronously in an online chat room, open source thrives as a vibrant community of human beings working toward shared goals. Technology is the medium, but people are the driving force.
For the past twelve years, the website Opensource.com has been generously supported by a commercial entity, providing a dedicated space for stories, ideas, and news from across the global technology ecosystem. Yet, the people—referring directly to the readers, contributors, advocates, and participants that make up the Opensource.com community—are not commercial entities. They are individuals with a shared passion for collaboration, transparency, and freedom in software development.
Now, after more than a decade of publication under its previous operational model, change is on the horizon. In just one month, Opensource.com is set to resolve that operational bug and embark on its next chapter. Community members, readers, and open source advocates are encouraged to stay tuned as more announcements unfold regarding the upcoming project.
