Managing Open Source Projects 3
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).”
Eben Gets Testy 1
Man oh man, am I sad to have missed this one. By this I am talking about the O’Reilly Radar: The Executive Briefing at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference( in Oregon, titled “Licensing in the Web 2.0 Era”.
The topic of the talk, between Tim O’Reilly and Eben Moglen, was to be:
“How does open source licensing need to adapt to the realities of software delivered as a service? We’ll talk with Eben Moglen about GPLv3’s and the AGPLv3’s attempt to deal with this issue.”
Instead it apparently turned into a lopsided smackdown, where Eben pretty much let loose with some direct (and arguably harsh) criticism of Tim.
By reading the most excellent blog post by Stephen Walli titled Tim O’Reilly, Eben Moglen, and Jane Jacobs, you will find links to the conference pages, as well as additional posts on other blogs about the event. As expected there are some pretty strong emotions and varied interpretations of what happened, however it is critical to note who actually attended the event, and who claims to know what happened but wasn’t actually there…
As I didn’t attend the event, I have little to say, other than the fact that I’m a little surprised that Eben would make such personal attacks in such a public fashion – however he might have been upset about a lot of things, as some of his comments make it sound that he’s been waiting for this opportunity for a while. Maybe Tim saw this coming, as his response was supposedly quite muted. Ok, maybe he was speechless. I have no idea, and wished I’d been there to see for myself.
For the record, I love Eben Moglen. He’s fought tirelessly for a worthy cause for a loooooong time, and has always been the source of a few good zingers, which of course I appreciate :-) I’ve met him several times, and have tremendous respect for him, as well as the causes for which he fights. It’s hard for me to criticize his actions when I wasn’t there, and have no context to interpret what happened.
On the flipside, one thing he said that brings me into a good great mood was about the GPLv3 and the desire by some to add verbage to restrict SaaS(Software as a Service). Ultimately, the debate rages, and one side says that companies that take GPL software and just host it on their servers should not be exempt from the restrictions of the GPL. They say the GPLv3 should be amended to include those scenarios, so your typical Web2.0 company (such as Facebook) is compelled to share their modifications to existing GPL works with the public.
Eben responded (and I quote from another blog post by Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier for Linux.com, for fair attribution):
“Moglen also took several questions from the audience. One attendee asked how we could take Moglen seriously when the GPLv3 didn’t close the software-as-a-service loophole. Moglen says that the GPLv3 could have closed the “loophole” but then it would have violated two of the fundamental freedoms: the freedom to run code for any purpose, and the right to private modifications. Moglen says that he’s not interested in legal work that removes people’s rights, but that he is more interested in doing work that finds a way to support the rights of both parties. When rights are in conflict, he says that lawyers need to find ways to protect the rights of both parties.”
There are a lot of people out there supposedly fighting for open source and free software and they clearly don’t care about both parties. I am relieved to hear that someone with the stature of Eben Moglen still remembers that there are several pieces in this puzzle that need to be put in the right place.
It is in fact that fear of rampant one-sided zealotry run amok that I’ve started this very website. I’m working on a new post that outlines one event that triggered the creation of this blog titled “Standing On The Shoulders Of…DELETE”. A tornado and a couple concerts are keeping me from getting it done, but all things in good time :-)
Back on topic, I’m elated to see Eben using the correct definition of freedom. Now to work on the rest of the group! ;-)
Mainstream Media and FOSS Pragmatists
Several blogs point to an article by Matt Asay at C|Net News.com titled The ironic rise of the Mac among open source developers.
The money quote:
“Maybe the open-source world isn’t as religious about freedom as is thought? I have a hard time with this answer, since I’m sometimes dubbed a zealot for believing that the GPL is the best open-source license yet I’m a hard-core Mac freak. I can’t really explain the contradiction, except that I found the Linux desktop difficult to use back when I used it (2004 and 2005), and I never liked Windows beyond Windows 2000. At a certain point, I just want something that works well. Maybe I’m not alone?”
You are not alone. Yeah baby, yeah!
I’m a MacBook Pro user myself, and noticed that a huge number of the Rails (and Ruby) developer community prefer the fruity computer experience as well.
Being that I started my technology career at Apple – longer ago than I want to admit in public – I’m somewhat biased though.
Another curiosity is that most of the Apple-powered developers I know also favor Debian on the server side of things. It’s a pretty solid majority of folks polled. Hmm.
Hello World! 5
Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing Open Source Hypocrisy, a resource dedicated to promoting the old school values of open source. Better put would be “protecting real open source from the fake imposters”.
I thought I’d introduce myself and this site with the first post, to set the record straight from the start.
My name’s Mitch and I’m an open source developer. That means I write code and give it away freely, under an open source license.
I do this because I strive for a common good; and have this romantic notion that there are others out there that would like to share their knowledge with me in a cooperative fashion.
Now on to the impetus behind this website.
While celebrating my birthday, we were walking across the street on the corner by our apartment here in New York City. While crossing, a woman driving a golden-brown SUV (Acura, IIRC) blazed down the street, most likely doing 1.5 times the speed limit. Or maybe more…
She refused to yield, despite us being in the right by crossing at the intersection; and as we pulled our kids back to safety she swerved to get around us, flapping her arms (and mouth) and gesticulating wildly. Her expression was clear, she was horribly put off by the lowly pedestrian scum blocking her path to the diamond store or wherever she was going.
I turned and walked behind her as she drove down the street. I held out both of my arms in confusion, clearly asking “Why?”
I was answered with a gesture involving her middle finger and little else.
So what has this to do with Open Source, or the topic of Open Source Hypocrisy?
Attitude, baby, it’s all about attitude.
This woman’s selfish and arrogant attitude mirrors a disturbing trend in the world of Open Source. People aren’t coming to Open Source because they have things to do and want to share in the effort – they are coming to Open Source so they can get their names up in lights, most likely in a vain attempt at easy money later, mostly due to their celebrity status.
Old School
Back in the day, we had stuff to do. It was much simpler then! Our motivation was driven by that simple need. There were no IPOs, no front page articles in trade magazines, no VCs looking for young studs to make rich on their first effort.
We had deadlines just like everyone else, and we shared our knowledge and code in the hopes that we could help each other, and get helped out in the process. Reciprocation, baby.
New School
Forget about getting work done, that’s for the old-timers. We’re the new school, and we’re here solely for the bling. If we don’t get the bling, then we’ll do whatever it takes to set ourselves up to be in the position to get it.
Consider New School as the software development equivalent of the Me Generation. There’s no reciprocation, it’s all about name recognition.
Clash of the Titans
When you have people that take a socialist perspective with software and inject a few selfish, arrogant types that just want their names all over everything, you have a recipe for disaster.
We’ve seen this happen before on open source projects, and presentations have been written up on how to deal with that personality – the most famous of course was the “How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People (And You Can Too)” presentation given at Google (video) .
I’ve watched projects with a great mix of talent wither to a handful of contributors due to such attitudes. The real whopper here is that usually these people think they are the true champions of open source, when they are essentially champions of themselves, wrapping their selfish motives in the cloak of the GPL, somehow justifying their somewhat suspect motives.
The Purpose of This Site
I’m not starting this site to bash on particular people or projects – even if some make themselves a constant and consistent target. Some people or projects may get mentioned more often than others, but it is the hopes of such critical mention will at least provide some incentive for the offending parties to consider changing their ways.
What’s important here is to bring the focus back to why we took this route in the first place.