Serious web developers have been keeping an eye on open source web design communities. For small start-ups, open source design is a dream come true. Or is it?

The first thing that “open source” brings to mind is free software. Mozilla Firefox, Linux, OpenOffice. The truth is that open source web design works nothing like OS software. The main use for open source web design is inspiration. Clients could browse the template library and find elements they want for their website, or developers could use snippets to construct their design. Open source design may also help weed out “rippers,” people that steal images and design elements from websites.

Open source web design doesn’t serve much more usefulness than that. For a website to be successful it needs to be unique and brandable. Most websites these days use PHP engines like WordPress or Drupal anyways, which require CSS templates. The open source designs require advanced knowledge of HTML to setup so they don’t even work that well for personal websites.

It seemed that open source web design could mean the chopping block to web designers. Thankfully this is not the case. Open source web design has been around for quite some time. The blogging platform WordPress has a large database of open source templates. This has provided a reasonable option for small blogs and helped get people on their feet. Open source design has actually helped develop the market for web design.

The bottom line is that open source web design are not the end to commercial web design. It is built around empty HTML framework and contributes back to designers.