Open Source Hypocrisy

While browsing the Open Source Community blog I found a post by Amy Stephen about managing open source projects. Or more succinctly, what it takes to manage one, and who is/isn’t a good fit to manage such an effort, written by Matt Asay for c|net.

The original post is based on research published in the Academy of Management Journal on the topic. Ultimately open source projects need specific skills in growing and nurturing the project and the project community and that need gets more and more prevalent over time as the project evolves.

I’d like to add my personal view that these skills are most definitely not technical skills, and despite the popular notion that open source projects should be managed by elite alphageeks, they scream for an exact opposite personality to manage.

I’ve seen several projects run into the ground due to a few developers who, despite making major contributions to the code, had a complete lack of skills needed to manage a project. For the alphageeks out there:

"eleet skillz" != "competent management"

Looking around the open source world, there are actually many famous personalities that although being technically gifted with brilliance, they are also notorious for being, er, less than approachable.

I’ll end this post with the moneyquote from Matt:

“in other words, a jerk is a jerk, even if he/she writes great code. You may want them on the project, but you don’t want them running it (into the ground).”

In a previous article Fake Steve Tees Off I covered some humorous-but-biting posts from Fake Steve Jobs, specifically regarding his disdain for open source extremists which he refers to as freetards.

Once again, he’s teed off, this time in a post titled Freetards Turn On Google which in turn is a response to a Wired article about some open source advocates finding Google’s Android as a sinister threat.

The whole point being made by Fake Steve is that there are people that call themselves open source advocates, but they sound a lot more like intolerant GPL extremists in that they actually consider other open source licenses a threat. Note the comments in the Fake Steve post, showing how far apart the two open source camps are.

That is the hypocrisy that caused this site to be launched in the first place.

The open source community should be excited that a company as big and powerful as Google has chosen to release their mobile platform on an open source license, regardless of the license chosen. Even if you don’t like the more free Apache license, you must accept the simple reality that this move provides even more incentive for the industry to shift toward an open source model for mobile platforms.

Here’s the money quote in the Wired article, from Jim Zemlin:

“Google is proliferating the use of the Linux kernel as the standard for mobile devices,” says Zemlin. “Similar to the server operating environment, the world will likely end up with two camps: Linux-based phones on one side with Microsoft and Symbian on the other. My guess is Microsoft and Symbian will continue to lag due to the lack of agility from their proprietary development models. It’s difficult for them to compete with open-source licenses, no matter which specific one.”

(Yeah the emphasis was mine.)

The Apache license gives the user the freedom to make whatever changes/enhancements to the software, and the freedom to decide how those are redistributed. If you disagree, please grab the nearest dictionary and look up the word freedom, and note the specific reference to freedom having a lack of restriction. :-)

Anywhoo, just thought it was bizarre that what is obviously a big win for open source gets panned by supposed open source advocates, and some even go as far as to say it is a threat despite being released by a license that is compatible with GPLv3 (see “GPL Compatibility” section at the end of the document for one explanation, many others found easily online).

I’ve been using the excellent Vienna RSS reader for the majority of my time on this Mac, and have to admit that I’m just getting overrun with all the reading and simply cannot catch up. One such feed category that I stopped looking at was the Apple one, that had a bunch of interesting and entertaining feeds.

So I took a quick gander today just to see if I’d missed anything. Other than the whole Leopard launch (sorry, off limits until Digidesign updates ProTools, grr) there were not that many interesting items, but there were a few that made me chuckle.

One of which is the Diary of Fake Steve Jobs and I have to presume you’re not living under a rock and know of the site, famous for a comedic/parody of a guy openly saying he’s pretending to be Steve Jobs.

The first post to make me chortle was Stallman to Dvorak: Welcome to freedom, your rulebook is in the mail. This is penned as a parodied response to Dvorak’s recent column where he chastises Redmond for giving him so much frustration that he’s seriously considering switching operating systems.

NOTE: As proper punishment I’m not linking to John’s original article, as I do occasionally try to follow the age-old advice don’t feed the trolls .

Of course, the most entertaining aspect of this is how he also deftly pretends to be a father figure of open source, Richard Stallman, who writes an open letter to Dvorak giving him instructions on how to comply with his newfound freedom.

He (Fake Steve, that is) then takes it one step further with PJ to Dvorak: Please schedule a re-education course ASAP, panning another open source celebrity.

However the point he’s shrewdly trying to make – while making fun of his victims of course – is that there are some pretty extreme people hanging around the open source world and they have some less-than-tolerant views on those who don’t subscribe to the exact same views of theirs.

That is one of the things that led me to launch this site, in the hopes of bringing to light the alarming rapid separation of open source and free software ideologies. The open source folks are totally hip with the free software gang, however there have been repeated examples of how intolerant the free software folks can be toward other open source efforts – some of which have been chronicled on this very site (not that anyone other than my mom reads this site, that is).

I had to write this article as Fake Steve really hit that nail on the head, while not bashing open source he clearly targets the more extremist types.

When are these people going to realize that enforced freedom is an oxymoron?

I don’t know how I missed it, maybe due to an overloaded feed reader, but the folks behind Quicksilver have posted their code up on the GoogleCode project called blacktree-alchemy.

As a Mac homer, I have to say Quicksilver is one of those apps that I cannot imagine living without. To see it go to the Apache License 2.0 puts a big fat smile on my face, that’s for sure!

Not only is this post about one of my favorite utilities for the Mac, but it also includes one of my favorite licenses. The venerable Wikipedia has a great write-up on the Apache License and how it fits into the jigsaw of open source software licenses.

Right on Blacktree! Now we gotta start working on all the other great tools on the Mac (giggle).