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October 28, 2003
Open Source Citizenship
Jon Udell has written an article on the way corporations are forking Open Source projects behind their corporate firewalls. He expands on the subject in his blog.
The points he make are all valid and reflect my own experience from the past 3 years leading an Open Source group that talks nearly daily to large corporations about exactly these subjects.
These companies are really thankful that there is an Open Source offering they can use for their own solutions. However there are several things that prevent them from actively participating. In addition to the points Jon mentions: Often, the department using the Open Source solution has a hard time pushing Open Source inside the company to start with. So they keep relatively quiet about it, arguing that higher management doesn't really care what they use - as long as it works. One customer told me that he would wait until the Open Source based solution had been in production for a while before mentioning the fact internally. Another customer told me that he was afraid to "visibly" participate in an Open Source project because he thought he would receive lots of emails about the companies products. As I think I have mentioned before, there are companies that ask us to donate newly developed Open Source components back to the project, because they do not want to do it themselves.
But something that follows a red-line through our discussions is the missing education of management and developers on the "Open Source way". So they basically do not understand the way an Open Source community works and to some extent are really afraid to participate. We must not forget that those walled-in developers and managers are just not used to the different culture of Open Source projects.
I think this is still the most important job we - Open Source evangelists - have. Spreading the word on Open Source inside the corporations and bringing down the FUD. Once we achieve that, then those developers will join us. Regardless of what management thinks.
Posted by Matthew at October 28, 2003 08:04 PM
Comments
Nice post Matt.
Having just attended the Enterprise Linux Forum I can tell you that people don't talk about it mostly out of fear that they will look stupid. There, I said it.
Joe Normal IT shops don't think like we do. Switching to Linux to them is removing one box and replacing it with another. That's it so far.
Want to get these guys to start talking? Talk to them, get the story, talk them through it in a truthful and friendly way, and publish that. They are not going to hunt us down.
I'm collecting success stories of companies using linux, mostly, but open source stories are welcome too.
Udell is point to you in his post too!
Posted by: steve at October 28, 2003 09:50 PM
yup, getting management to understand that there is value in "giving back" and participating, rather than seeing this as a waste of their expensive employee's time is hard.
management is usually looking at far too short term goals to understand or care.
Posted by: jed at October 29, 2003 01:05 AM