When it comes to open-source communities, individuals are much better citizens than institutions. The enlightened self-interest that causes individuals to send back bug fixes, contribute ideas for new features and write documentation is much harder to find in institutions. This week, the JargonSpy analyzes why such a gap exists and what can be done about it.
The first step in understanding this gap is to recognize the roots of open source. Almost all open-source projects begin as a community of individuals. A leader starts a project and publishes code on the Internet, and then others join in. As more people show up, community roles and rules develop.
The founder often assumes the role of "benevolent dictator for life." Certain community members, "committers," are permitted to change the master source code repository. Mailing lists are created for developers and for users. Support for the process in the form of licenses, source code repositories and patterns of success for community management smooth the way.
But as the JargonSpy pointed out a few months ago, commercial support for open-source projects has become dominant in the major projects that account for the vast majority of use of open source (see "The Commercial Bear Hug of Open Source.") In addition, open source is being adopted not just by individuals but by institutions--corporations, governments, universities and so on--that are using it as a foundation for much of their software infrastructure.
While some people bristled at the notion that open-source projects have come under the institutional umbrella, others have welcomed the trend. Business development executives and evangelists at commercial open-source projects like Alfresco, foundation-run projects like Apache, Eclipse and Mozilla, or community-run projects like Drupal all just love it when a large company like Citibank makes a decision to adopt open source. But everyone that the JargonSpy talked to has noticed that institutional collaboration is much lower than expected and hoped for, based on patterns of individual participation.
The JargonSpy first started to understand the collaboration gap when Matt Asay, vice president of business development at Alfresco, gave a talk at the New York CTO Club a few months ago. Asay explained that huge companies and large systems integrators were using Alfresco for large-scale development projects in which tens of millions of dollars were being invested. But while the individual users of Alfresco regularly send back contributions of bug fixes and feature suggestions, the company rarely hears from institutional users, whether they used the licensed version or not.
Asay's worry was that this lack of institutional support was not just an annoyance or an inconvenience, but was possibly evidence that that core communication flows needed to sustain an open-source project break down in an institutional setting. He kept saying that his point was not about Alfresco making money, but we just couldn't hear him.
During a later conversation with Ian Skerrett, director of marketing for the Eclipse Foundation, the JargonSpy finally understood what Asay had been trying to say.
Eclipse, an open-source project that creates tools for supporting and automating software development, has more than 170 companies among its members. Skerrett explained that even though institutional support for Eclipse is strong--it has been adopted by thousands of major private- and public-sector institutions--contributions from institutional users of Eclipse are quite rare. That a nonprofit was having the same problem as a commercial project finally got Asay's point across: There is something different about the way institutions participate in open source projects.
To understand this on a deeper level, I also contacted Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier, openSUSE Community Manager. Brockmeier points out that open-source projects never really become fully institutionalized. Just because
For the individual, the motivation to contribute to an open-source project comes from several directions. If you find a bug or add a feature, you don't want to keep making patches to add that code in new releases of the software. Another often cited motivation is gratitude: People like giving back.
All of these motivations are in play for institutions, except gratitude. Perhaps the difference between individual and institutional gratitude contributes to the collaboration gap.
Skerrett suggests that another cause maybe the fact that collaboration skills are part of being an individual but are much newer to institutions. For example, the idea of collaborating with outside partners on research and development, the practice of open innovation that Henry Chesbrough writes about, is novel and innovative. Skerrett points out that institutions don't have the same collaborative plumbing in place that individuals do.
Asay, Skerrett and Brockmeier are all doing something about the collaboration gap. Each spends a lot of time explaining the value of greater participation in their open-source projects. While their efforts are noble and necessary, a new paradigm is needed for a larger change to take place.
If collaboration and participation in open source and other communities is really as valuable as claimed, the benefits should start to be measured. If the benefits are tangible, it won't take long for stock analysts to ask CEOs and boards of directors if they are not only using open source, but if they are participating as well. Then change will come.
The JargonSpy believes collaboration and participation in open-source communities has a significant payoff. Google, IBM, Novell,
How has participating in open-source projects paid off for your company? Let JargonSpy know in the Comments section.
Dan Woods is chief technology officer and founder of Evolved Media, a firm that offers content creation, editorial and publishing services.
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