Enterprise Open Source Magazine is the world's leading publication showcasing every aspect of profitable Open Source solutions in business and consumer context.

Do You Grok Open Source? by Mark Hinkle

‘Grok’ means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed – to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science – and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man.

Today, many people use the term grok synonymously with understand. To grok is much more. The true meaning is lost on many people, people who may have heard of the term without reading any Heinlein. Fortunately, most of the participants in the open source community truly grok open source.

Open source owes its success to a large group of people who have a shared set of values about which they feel strongly. Mainstream society probably lacks any real understanding of the things that matter to them in the world of open source. It’s ironic that the term came from a fictitious Martian language. Most people not in the know look at devoted open source developers as if they hailed from the red planet....

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