'Open Source Community': It's the Software stupid!
1 March 2007
Defining the Community
"I'm black and I'm proud"
Free and open source software is powered by a large community of individuals who have come together around shared values and a set of software. Technically, this has been made possible by Tim Berners-Lee's creation of a key piece of free/open-source software, the World Wide Web.
Who is the Free and open source community? I would define it quite strictly - it is people who create and use free/open source software.
There are a lot of other people around the community, hanging off it, feeding it, feeding off it. However, not all these people are part of the community.
There is an organisation called the "Black Community Development Project" who are doing important work in the rougher parts of Edinburgh. If I went up to Scotland and got a job with the Black Community Development Project, would I be a member of the Black Community?
I could be feeding it, or feeding off it, but I would not be part of the black community. I would be engaging with Black people, perhaps even supporting Black people, but I still would not be Black.
Release the meteor
"You mean I finally have frickin' sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their frickin' heads?"
Imagine that one day the Open Source Intitive, Open Source Developer Labs, Free Standards Group, Linux Foundation, The Open Group, Linux Professional Institute, Linux International and the Desktop Linux Consortium meet for a super-conference in a plush conference venue in London.
Now we know that Linus Torvalds, who now draws his pay check from the Linux Foundation, avoids such things and just gets on with his job, but everyone else from the above organisations attend.
On that day, Steve Ballmer decides to aim his death star at that exact place, which then launches a giant chair which crushes the conference centre, wiping it from the face of the earth.
The question is, did we lose anything?
Answers to this in the comments would be good, as I have no idea. Many of these non-profits do not seem to attempt to engage with us to tell us why they think what they are doing is going to help the community. They may feed, or feed off, the free software community, but if they are not making code, or installing it, or training people to use it, then they are doing something else, it might be something good but it does not necessarily make them part of the community.
Anyway, let me know what you think!
1 Joe Bloggs says...
I don't agree. I could be busy coding a PACMAN to run on my 8086, with the intention of freely publishing the finished source code. The fact that there's no demand for it (market or otherwise) means that there can't be an 8086 community. Similarly, many Linux projects fall by the wayside on Sourceforge or wherever, and not even the developers care about them any more. Apart from unfinished/half-assed projects, the really good (popular) projects such as official Linux kernel dev, other BSD-type OSes or porting unsupported network cards to other platforms have only a very small handful of people capable of contributing through the code, compared to millions who benefit and talk about it like us. So, we are the "community" and the devs are the devs. Which are you?
Posted at 3:32 a.m. on March 2, 2007
2 Zeth says...
Hi, thanks for coming!
>Which are you?
I am someone who uses open source software, and I am also currently writing an open-source application with an even smaller potential userbase than your hypothetical Pac-Man clone.
Apart from that, I am a bit confused by your comment, sorry about that. I'm not sure that I ever mentioned that demand or number of developers was a factor. So we seem to be agreeing with each other.
Posted at 7:23 p.m. on March 2, 2007
3 Joe Bloggs says...
Hi Zeth. Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was trying to say that the users constitute the community, not the devs. The number of end-users is very important. The devs tend to be people brought together by an association at uni or through other computing-related contacts, and in group projects often vehemently disagree over everything from the program content to who should be doing what. In commerce they would be brought together by the paycheck under the command of some suits, and they wouldn't refer to themselves as a "community", just colleagues. In open source software projects, there has to be really skilful leadership and co-ordination from a powerful personality, to get anything substantial done. The reason why many projects don't make it is because they don't seem to offer recognition from a peer group, so devs lose interest. The personality cult-leader dev figurehead knows this, so he often astroturfs on behalf of the group, to create an apparent real-world demand. This culture comes from demosceneing and cracking. If you can't pay in money you have to pay in coolness. For these reasons I maintain that only the users are the real community.
Posted at 7:38 p.m. on March 2, 2007
4 Zeth says...
Hello again, thanks for the clarification. You make another interesting distinction that I have not considered. I agree that the users are the central part of the community.
Certainly, if we take the following activities: - Helping someone install Linux or an Open Source Application - Answering someone's problem at on a mailing list, discussion forum or IRC channel. - Meeting together to learn how to use an open source program. - Going for a chat and a meal with other users
These are all important community activities that help build and sustain the community. Your astute social observations may well be true, I will need to reflect on that.
Posted at 1:35 p.m. on March 3, 2007
5 Joe Bloggs says...
Interesting thoughts.. I'm very glad I found this website. Yes, it would appear to be a very fine line between members of the community and members of hierarchical organisations such as internet forums or specialty groups that may, as you rightly say, either contribute something to the Linux community or else consume from the Linux community.
Unfortunately, many people involved in the open source software community are less helpful than cunningly self-aggrandizing. I have many examples I could quote, of the culture of astroturfing and social engineering that seems to be the driving force. Further, these same people are often also involved in various other schemes loosely connected with open source software (such as their own "open source" music or art under Creative Commons) and use this as a springboard to attract attention and to build a brand name for free, before they ditch the idea of open source and start milking the brand. If you want to see this process unfold before your very eyes, look at www.jahshaka.org because that's the textbook formula in action right there. However, I do have dozens of other examples.
Nice chatting with you. Look forward to reading more of your stuff.
Posted at 11:11 p.m. on March 3, 2007
6 Joe Bloggs says...
Hehe.. It seems that Command Line Warriors is more influential than one might think. Hours after I wrote my comment above (about www.jahshaka.org), the site in question went down. It has literally just now gone back up - the look of the front page radically revised to look less transparently mercenary. Someone is obviously determined to make libsndfile pay.
Posted at 11:01 p.m. on March 5, 2007