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April 20, 2005
Open Source integrity
Interesting discussions going on between Matt and Steve, here and here. This is such a difficult discussion to have via weblogs - a panel on this at an upcoming conference (there seem to be plenty around) would be a better place. I'm just going to pick out something Matt said and comment (make sure you read the whole post).
I talk to startups all the time that want the benefits of open source without abiding by its precepts. They should fail.
This is such a difficult call to make. In fact before I left for OSBC I thought I had a clear-cut opinion of how what "abiding" should look like. Mostly colored by my own experiences over the past five years of steering part of a commercial entity (our Open Source group) into the - as yet - uncharted waters of Open Source. This was 2000, remember.
When we first tried to work with the Open Source communities, we were treated as being a commercial entity that wanted to do exactly what Matt writes about above. Just cherry-pick the "free" software to build commercial offerings on. And it took both sides a while to get used to each other and figure out how we could get along. "Giving back" became a meme that I think is still so true even today. If you get involved with an Open Source community then you need to give something back to maintain your integrity. That "something" can be code, time, test-results, documentation, hardware, writing articles about the project and loads more. So, plenty of opportunities to become an equal member of the community.
Now, maintaining that integrity towards the Open Source community on the one side and still being able to look your commercially minded colleagues and managers in the eye is not easy. In fact it's a rough ride and you should be prepared to battle it out on several fronts at once. Things may be slightly easier today - but not much.
So, there I was - five years of "integrity" and business model building - when suddenly (well, not so suddenly really) these new business entities appear that seem (at first glance) to be built more on the commercial aspects of using Open Source than on the community principles. "That can't be right" was my first thought and "how unfair to the communities". I was also sceptic as to whether their business models would work. I still am to a point. But not as much as I was before I went to OSBC.
It isn't about whether "this way is right" or "that way is correct". If those companies give back to the projects they profit from, then that should work. If not, then they'll receive no support from the community and eventually fail (as Matt says). After all, you can't sell services for an Open Source project you aren't welcome in (and that publicly). Customers aren't stupid anyway. Maybe those new companies will even work out new ways of working with the communities - ways that are profitable to both sides. Who knows. We didn't back in 2000 :-).
I still think that just linking to an Open Source project from your home-page to "show your appreciation" isn't enough though. That link should be to a page showing just what you have done to give back to the community. Far more effective.
So really, there is no absolute integrity. It's a moving target that we will constantly redefine as we move forward. These are interesting times indeed.
Posted by Matthew at April 20, 2005 07:54 PM