Often volunteers create maps where there was nothing before, as in Kibera in Kenya where basic amenities such as drinking water sources and latrines as well as churches are located to improve living standards and combat illness (for example, where latrines are located too near water sources). The Kibera team have been asked by Ushahidi and Google to include mapping of the slums of Port-au-Prince as part of the relief effort, something that hasn’t been done before.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has just rediscovered cooperativism as a way of galvanizing people to vote Labour. He would have been much more in tune with the times if he had widened it to include the open source movement in all its different aspects. It is one of the most interesting phenomena of our times, a kind of global mutual society. While the likes of Apple and Amazon, though producing fantastic products, are becoming ever more controlling and proprietary, it is sobering to be reminded that one of the basic instincts of human nature — mutual cooperation for no cost — is thriving on a global scale.
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