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<title>Managing Open Source: 9 February 2001</title><p>
<h2><font color="#cc6600" face="Courier New, Courier, mono" size="+2">Editor's Column</font></h2>
<p><a href="//lspintro.html">-Louis Suarez-Potts</a></p>
<p>9 February 2001</p>
<p><b>Organizing Open Source</b></p>
<p>As a system of software production, <a href="http://www.opensource.org">Open 
  Source</a> usually says little to nothing about the <i>how</i> of its organization 
  and implementation. But, in fact, merely releasing software under GPL (or some 
  other such <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/">license</a>) does not 
  necessarily get you &quot;there.&quot; Even if your release is <a href="http://www.slashdot.org">Slashdotted</a>, 
  it still may not fly. What's lacking is the infrastructure comprised both of 
  machines and persons, for ensuring that interested developers can securely download 
  the open-sourced code and upload their patches without totally wrecking not 
  just the software but also the whole enterprise. And what's also missing from 
  this fanciful picture is any system for the creation and management of a developer 
  community. Open Source, that is, is more than a number of individuals downloading 
  source code and working on it alone; when it works, it is implicitly a communal 
  and collaborative enterprise.</p>
<p> Of course, one <i>could</i> simply place the code on a server send a notice 
  to a probably indifferent <a href="http://www.slashdot.org">Slashdot</a>, and 
  then wait. If the code were interesting enough or somehow offered compellingly 
  attractive benefits, it might very well attract developers who could form working 
  groups, might establish a version system like <a href="http://www.cvshome.org/">CVS 
  (Concurrent Versions System)</a>, and--maybe--articulate directions and goals 
  for the community. And it might happen: <a href="http://www.linux.org/">Linux</a>, 
  for instance, was and remains pretty much a grassroots enterprise (what <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric 
  Raymond</a> <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/">calls 
  the &quot;bazaar&quot;</a>), with a widespread and disparate community of developers--and 
  <a href="http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/torvalds/">Linus Torvalds</a>--maintaining 
  and contributing to the code as they will, in implicit collaboration. And Linux, 
  with its globally dispersed and active community is, as we all know, the defining 
  model of Open Source.</p>
<p>But, does the Linux model still obtain, or at least with the same force as 
  previously? I'd like to suggest that, for a variety of reasons, Linux is less 
  the model for the future of Open Source than an exceptional paragon.. The community--or, 
  communities--that have formed around the kernel have been more passionate than 
  commercial. This is to say--heretically, to be sure--that the model of Open 
  Source Linux exemplifies (a community of passionate users and developers) is 
  probably not the model of open-source ventures to come-- and, according to recent 
  <a href="http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,38240,00.html">reports</a>, 
  they will come.</p>
<p>Instead of a Linux-like model, however, the more likely scenario is that a 
  company will wish to open source proprietary software because the company leaders 
  have come to realize that it's not only cheaper in the long run to develop software 
  using the open-source model, but that one also gets in better software faster. 
  A company, that is, might open source its software to save money and get ahead 
  of its rivals. The loss of proprietary control is, in this scenario, comparatively 
  slight in exchange for what it gains.</p>
<p>And what do the developers gain? If the company has arranged its Open Source 
  venture properly, developers benefit in at least two, obvious, ways: from the 
  intellectual capital embodied in the code and from the communities organized 
  around that capital. The interested developer can, at her will, deploy the available 
  code for her own purposes; and learning from the construction of the code further 
  enhances her own career. What is more, the collaborative community that develops 
  in working on the code provides her with invaluable help both in the present 
  and in the future. </p>
<p>But for this economy to work, the company open sourcing its property must not 
  only make the source code it has opened in some way desirable and valuable to 
  developers, but also provide an infrastructure, technical and managerial, that 
  enables developers to work efficiently on the intellectual capital it has released. 
  Without such an infrastructure, by which the code is made securely available 
  and communities enabled, little might ever take place that will prove profitable 
  for the originating company. In fact, one could state it even more strongly: 
  Open Source, as a business and not as a hobby, demands sophisticated managerial 
  support that will make sure the servers work, the pages load, and--importantly!--help 
  shape the community of developers into productive groups, either through roadmaps, 
  standards, or goals.</p>
<p>All this is fairly obvious to anyone who works in Open Source--such as the 
  OpenOffice.org community. But it merits stating, for the myth of Open Source 
  is still the myth of the West mapped to cyberspace: of individuals hacking at 
  their favorite programs for by and large mysterious reasons, of which personal 
  satisfaction ranks high. In the &quot;real world&quot; there is, of course, 
  still that appeal to much of open-source work. But Open Source is more than 
  a culture: it is a dialectical strategy by which developers are given enormous 
  power and opportunity that requires a novel managerial approach.</p>
<br>
<h4>Previous columns</h4>
<p>1 February 2001 <i><a href="ec1Feb.html">Open Source 
  and Its Culture</a></i></p>
<p>23 January 2001 <i><a href="communityaction.html">Community 
  Action</a></i></p>
<p>16 January 2001 <i><a href="ec16Jan01.html">Quo Vadis 
  OpenOffice.org?</a></i></p>
<p>9 January 2001 <i><a href="thebuild.html">The 613 
  build:&nbsp; problems and opportunities</a></i></p>
<p>3 January 2001 <i><a href="SunsOpenDoor.html">Sun's 
  open door</a></i></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p> 
<p>E-mail:<a href="mailto:louis at collab.net"> Louis at collab.net</a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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