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Open Source Organization Models Discussed
blogologue writes "Harvard Business School has an article up discussing The Organizational Model for Open Source. It has some good points, and I think it sums up what many of us know, but haven't quite been able to put into words yet: 'People are intimately aware of the fact that too much structure will disenfranchise the very people who make the most successful open source projects possible.'"
Cleaning out the cruft is the sort of thing that any project is bad at, and it isn't just Open Source. Until very recently the company I worked for was heaping more and more features into their software and they just wern't being used. They recently got a clue and have embarked on two major projects to strip it down and clean it up. Its taken years though. I don't think OSS suffers from this any more than anyone else.
By the way, in the last SourceForge newsletter they indicated that they will soon begin to remove dead projects from the database (Following a proper procedure to ensure the project really is dead). The primary candidates are those with 0% activity in the past six months, I believe.
well at least it renders correctly in Mozilla.
For some real insight into how/why/when the open source development model makes sense, read your classics:
the widely quoted but maybe a bit less widely read work of Eric S. Raymond
#!/usr/bin/english
Moreover, you'll might notice that the second paragraph starts with :
So just read the article, it's quite good.
Harvard publishes a magazine called "Harvard Business Review (HBR)". Previously they did not cover Linux/OpenSource. But recently I recently I read an in HBR that says Enterprises should look into OpenSource as a viable alternative to propritary products (specifically OpenOffice).
HBR is read by presidents/directors/managers, so it is interesting to see how the thinking is changing.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
I did, its basically talking about three OSS projects that have created Non Profits around themselves, and the structure that imposes. However, she talks about OSS as though it is one big collective, and asks if there is an inherent dichotomy in an OSS project imposing order through a Non Profit.
However, there is no such thing as a single "Open Source Organisation Model", and I believe that different models would be better suited to the sort of organisation that the Non Profit imposes. For example the FreeBSD model would be a good fit with a Non Profit because the FreeBSD model is already pretty close to a Non Profit anyway. On the other hand, the Perl or Linux models probably don't fit so well.
So why does the researcher seem so confused about the idea of imposing order on OSS? A lot of OSS projects have been impossing order on themselves for quite some time now. The rise of Non Profit Organisations around OSS hasn't magically added order where there was none previously.
Have you forgotten GNOME? In GNOME 2, they removed a lot of configuration options and deprecated APIs! They even got heavily flamed and critisized *because* they removed stuff.
Oh yes, let's claim that people almost never remove old stuff while ignoring one of the largest open source projects out there.
People almost never remove old stuff. For example: - old projects from sourceforge -
because sourceforge is designed so you CAN'T remove an old project. Lord knows I have tried.
and emails to admins get's a response of "that is against our policy."
It's sourceforges fault they have gobs of cruft there... they wont let you get rid of the abandoned stuff or even the ones that had a good intention but you found someone else doing it so you abandoned your's to help them... kind of projects.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The article was not on technical but organizational topics.
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