Open Source is a mechanism to assist us in furthering our own research and understanding how collaborative virtual workspaces can be applied to different public domains. Using Open Source to make CVW available is itself an act of collaboration, supporting a new channel for the free exchange of ideas and promoting cooperation across many disparate entities. In investigating the reasons for the success of Linux, Raymond focused on peer review. When programmers on the Internet can read, redistribute, and modify the source for a piece of software, it evolves.
People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs.
And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing . . . and produces better software. But unlike Linux or Apache, CVW is a unique code base with which, as a combined entity, very few people are familiar. Moreover, it demands social reengineering for its users to experience enhanced productivity. As our customers gain more experience with CVW, the initial feedback from many of them is that the system can yield significant benefits for providing virtual collocation. It also stimulates their thinking about the potentially far-reaching effects of this kind of collaboration on the future workplace.