Tony Fish gave an interesting speech on the concept of the Digital Footprint in a web 2.0 world at the recent Future of Mobile show.

Tony describes a digital footprint as:

Footprints: Like Neil Armstrong we all leave footprints. 2.0 has a fascination with this data, in web 2.0 language ‘the next intel inside.’ I don’t associate footprints with identity. Footprints are about where we have been, for low long, how often and the inter-relationships.

Therefore Digital Footprint is not identity, your passport, bank account or social security number. Digital Footprints come from mobile, web and TV – the digital data and metadata of who we are, the true value and why the ownership of this data is the battle ground to be won and lost, the reason why Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google wakes up thinking mobile before he looks at his email or worries about the value of double click or improving a search algorithm.

It made me pause for a moment and think about how open source application software, while highly dependent on a lot of web 2.0 concepts, really does differ in many ways from this more generic democratizing of the web.

First, while software projects and the commercial entities may gain a lot of popularity (SugarCRM of course being one of the more prominent), there is a level of anonymity still associated with those that develop the final products. Sure, there is activity that is personal and recognizable in forums, etc. in many communities, but there is a nice organic nature to many OSS finished products - a sort of “the sum is more than the whole” thing happening. In many consumer-side web 2.0 communities, self-expression and individualism create cacophonies.

And secondly, to Tony’s point about how there is an importance of “ownership” of this data…or not…

In the open source software world, we do not throw the concept of ownership around lightly. But in the generic web world of today, this is a serious battleground indeed. Some may argue that a person adding images to their Flikr site, or making a very customized social network profile has created something unique on the web and thus, their own. But again, to this point about sums and wholes…without the bits and pieces of borrowed content, ubiquitous and standard web platforms for delivery and creation of said sites…these highly individual, but at the same time uniform communities could not exist. Open source software development, in its own way allows users to take ownership and pride in a project, and fortunately for us in these communities the concept of individual ownership has not been a major issue.

But ultimately, while a Myspace or Facebook page may help individuals eek out some form of digital footprint, it seems to me that being part of a major community, a game-changing software evolution, or simply a really cool project, allows one to take an ownership stake and in effect create far more interesting digital footprint than simply embedding a Youtube clip or an MP3.