# Collaboration with open source

Collaboration is one of the best ways to learn and diversify knowledge on many subjects.
Accordingly, one of the common reasons for getting involved with open source is to collaborate with others.
In the past, *collaboration* and *open source* referred to cloning source code and submitting patches (or "merge requests").
Recently, though, the meaning of collaboration over computers has broadened to include real-time editing of documents, shared directories accessible, on-demand, from all manner of platforms and devices, and a common work environment.
Instead of just collaborating on creating open source, the modern computerist is collaborating *with* open source.

## What is groupware?

In old traditional business-speak, collaboration is something that happens with *groupware*.
Groupware is a suite of applications built to deal with data that exists on some shared resource.
That shared resource used to be a server owned and operated by the organization using groupware.
Users would log into their account, and everyone had some level of access to the same centralized data.

It's very much embedded in the culture of business and personal computing that groupware, whether it's called groupware or not, come in monolithic packages.
While it's important for collaborative tools to be integrated enough that data doesn't get trapped in a technical silo, that doesn't mean every component with collaborative features must or should be from the same provider.
In fact, as open source helps demonstrate, diversity turns out to be a powerful thing in all areas of computing, software distributors included.
The more tools are built with collaboration in mind, the more choice each user has when joining in.

## Third party

Most non-open collaborative tools these days allow for the fact that not all users have accounts with the collaboration suite in use.
In other words, if someone sends you a link to share.example.com but you don't have an account with example.com, then it's likely you'll be offered a chance to sign up.

On the surface, that seems admirably and pragmatically inclusive.
You can sign up for an online tool, possibly even using a temporary or "junk" email address and identity, and get involved.
However, in reality this brings a third party into what is inherently only a two-party process.
The host of the collaboration suite isn't a part of the collaboration, it's a gateway that some potential users don't want to pass through, especially if the host of the collaboration suite is a particularly large corporation with interests in user profiling and data collection.
Furthermore, most non-open collaboration suites expect that all users can use, or want to use, a specific tool set.
There's rarely any effort to design a specification that can be used to provide access for a user with tools thatthe user chooses.
Instead, it's an expectation, and sometimes a requirement, that users access the suite through a specific client or browser.
In a traditional business setting, that's mostly a safe expectation to make (ignoring, for the sake of over-simplification, questions of accessibility for users with needs not built into the client by default), but as remote work becomes more common in corporations and continues to be the norm for digital volunteerism, flexible tooling is an invaluable asset.

## Open source collaboration

The good news is that based on open source  collaboration tools are cropping up everywhere.
There's software for real-time collaborative [writing](https://opensource.com/business/15/7/five-open-source-alternatives-google-docs) and [spreadsheets](https://opensource.com/article/19/7/get-going-ethercalc), [drawing](LINK TO MY ARTICLE ABOUT DRAWPILE), and [everything](https://sandstorm.io) [else](http://nextcloud.com).

Open source is collaborative by nature, and collaboration is better when it's open.
With so many open source options, there's no reason to risk excluding anyone by choosing to collaborate on closed or gated systems.
Go open, go collaborative.

[Download our latest ebook](https://opensource.com/downloads/collaboration-tools-ebook) about some exciting open source collaborative tools, including Cryptpad, LogicalDOC, Sandstorm, and more!