Open Sourcing through the mechanism of online communities is not a viable strategy for anything outside of software. Even with the best license and a well-designed strategy, trying to apply the same community model to areas outside of software development is a lost cause.

This is not for lack of ability or will amongst the AT community, but it is simple a matter of technical competence. A huge factor in the success of GNU/Linux, though not often noted as such, was the community’s ability to use collaborative, web-based tools to their advantage. Naturally, software programmers would be able to use such tools, they created them!

However, it remains to be seen if other communities can galvanize themselves in a similar fashion. It is one thing to be able to use email, but what about FTP, podcasts, RSS Feeds, Wikis, Bulletin Boards, Listservs, Blogs and the slew of other tools employed by the Free Software community?

While the web 2.0 revolution has come of age for the technophiles of the world, the vast majority of web users are still muddling through the benefits of web 1.0, while the vast majority of the world’s population has yet to receive the benefits of a dial-up connection.

It is, moreover, unlikely that AT professionals will take time out of their busy schedules for online collaboration. While it is perfectly reasonable to argue that real life experiences should be the primary source for virtual documentation, it remains to be seen whether such reasoning will take hold in the minds of others. Particularly because web-based communities require an intermediate knowledge of computers to participate.

For most, getting up to speed would require reading, trial and error, and perhaps some training. Quite the tall order for the perpetually busy.