Open Source Hypocrisy comments

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"Managing Open Source Projects" by Spacemonkey

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 22:49:27 +0000

I suppose we need to agree what “management” is ;-)

I think it is even more critical for new/small projects to have a “people person” on board not only to evangelize the technology but to recruit both geeks and community members. In my involvement with Mambo and Joomla, I’d say those were my biggest contributions to both projects: helping grow the community, trying to “convert” additional developers to the platform, promoting enthusiastic community members to help out on the forums and other non-technical stuff, etc.

Imagine a brand new project, with only two contributors. Both are fantastically gifted from the technical perspective, but suffer significant weakness on the “people skills” side of the equation. The project might take off anyway if the software were useful, however the ability (or inability) of the two founders will ultimately decide how successful the project will be, and not based on their technical merits either.

This project will have a slow start, even if their code is brilliant. Nobody will want to hang out when they are being told they aren’t smart enough, blah blah. So the code will have little community behind it, which is honestly what makes most open source projects tick in the first place.

I suppose some projects are successful regardless of the community – but that might be due to dominant market share, such as Apache.

However there is one exception that I can think of – qmail. Dan Bernstein did a great job with qmail, but his prickly “just shut up and do as I say, I’m smarter than you” demeanor significantly limited the adoption of qmail overall. qmail is still a successful project and is in use all over the Internet, but imagine if Dan had a more people-friendly personality, like Larry Wall, Dave Thomas or Guido van Rossum?

And remember we’re talking geeks here, so I don’t think you need to be David Lee Roth or anything, but cuddlier than a crocodile would be a good start…

"Managing Open Source Projects" by Graham Spice

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 17:08:21 +0000

I’ve been monitoring these trends in management styles from within the forums of large open source projects for over a decade….projects like osCommerce, phpBB and Mambo made for interesting observations. When I really got into the Mambo scene, I was astounded by the core team and their ability to work and communicate with the community as this was a stark difference from many other OS projects I’d been observing.

As large projects are passed down to new leaders we are now seeing how this management skills vs. coding skills debate plays out. Different styles in communication, focus, and manipulation (in a positive sense of that word) are easily apparent as these “leaders” of open source stumble or accelerate.

I’ve run a very small open source project of my own for a few years and I am not a good coder. I think this to be a hindrance for a small project like mine because I cannot effect much change. I did a good job promoting/marketing the project and it has a lot of users….but many are unsatisfied in the long-run as few upgrades or new features are released.

I am suggesting that this discussion applies only to large, established open source projects. Fledgling projects must to be started by the eleet squad and there is little initial need for “management” types. At what stage is it appropriate to bring them in?

"How Do You Protect Your Copyright?" by Spacemonkey

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:32:15 +0000

I suppose you’re right, and I wasn’t clear enough on that – I agree with Matt’s general opinion on the matter (do what you can, but don’t break your back).

I still think the META tag is a problem as it just makes it easier for bad guys to find vulnerable machines. It’s like being forced to walk down the street with your underwear on the outside ;-)

"How Do You Protect Your Copyright?" by Jeremy

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:30:11 +0000

Your last paragraph implies that WordPress doesn’t use a Meta tag, but it does.

"Fake Steve Tees Off" by Joseph LeBlanc

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:42:24 +0000

Evidently I have been living under a rock and should have stayed there. Thanks to you, I’m not going to get any work done for the rest of the week :P

"BSD->GPL Relicense Follow Up" by Graham Spice

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:41:27 +0000

I hope that users and code contributors of Open Source projects take the time to read these recommendations from the SFLC. Gold in them hills…

Thanks to Mitch for compiling this info for us lazy open source supporters. ;)

"BSD-to-GPL Relicense Stirs Controversy Between F/OSS Camps" by Spacemonkey

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:22:41 +0000

That’s one of the fundamental differences in philosophy between the two camps. The Open Source crowd want their software to be used by anyone, and the Free Software crowd want their license to be used by everyone. hee hee!

However it does seem that this whole thing was really just a couple of careless developers making a mistake and when they committed to the repo, they didn’t realize they were distributing their code to the world at large. Looks like the whole thing was a tempest in a teapot.

And lets face it, both sides of the story have their blowhards and screamers.

HOWEVER: It does highlight the matter of one open source camp taking the software from another open source camp, and attempting to relicense it under an incompatible license with the original authors. That simply doesn’t make sense to me.

"Hello World!" by Spacemonkey

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 19:17:46 +0000

@Graham: Your comments are always welcome here man :-)

Sometimes the message I bring isn’t always positive, as I occasionally find myself with the urge to point a very public finger at something I find totally offensive to my open source palate. However you’re right, for the most part I want to get people thinking about why they are involved in open source, to question their own motives.

And yes, I also have my own views that influence what I write about. But until I get help from other writers, this is my site! ;-)