The Success of Open Source

JoshuaDFranklin writes "When confronted with the reality of Open Source, academics often ask what processes allow it to happen. In his new book The Success of Open Source, Berkeley professor Steven Weber answers that question. He presents a clear, logical picture of how Open Source development works in a variety of projects, and comes to the intriguing conclusion that the process may be generalizable to other areas of production. The results, he argues, would 'make the consequences of the first-generation Internet seem quaint.'" Read on for the rest of Franklin's review. The Success of Open Source author Steven Weber pages 320 pages, 5 line illustrations publisher Harvard University Press rating 9 reviewer Joshua Daniel Franklin ISBN 0674012925 summary Weber argues that the success of Open Source is due to a production process than may be generalizable to other arenas.

Weber is an academic and makes no apologies for it. He is not presenting an exciting new business plan, advocating a particular method of software development, or calling hackers to revolution. He is simply describing his findings after extensive research of the Open Source development process and drawing conclusions from them. As such, this book may not appeal to everyone in the Open Source community. However, Weber's ideas are timely and informative for anyone who wants to explain or advocate Open Source. He likens his work to The Machine that Changed the World, the story of Toyota's production method (224):

That book made two simple and profound points: The Toyota "system" was not a car, and it was not uniquely Japanese. The parallels are obvious. Open source is not a piece of software, and it is not unique to a group of hackers.

The first part of The Success of Open Source is a historical case study that examines the origins and social development of the Open Source community. It begins with Unix and hacker culture. For those who have read Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution and Peter Salus' A Quarter Century of UNIX, there is little new material here, but Weber offers a new and interesting perspective on the events. For example, he offers the insight that "hacker culture" existed before widespread network connectivity, drawing into question whether cheap bandwidth is really essential.

From there, he covers the development of the BSDs, Apache, and Linux, focusing again on social structures. He describes diverse events such as the messy expulsion of Theo de Raadt from the NetBSD core, the creation of Apache by an informal group of interested developers, and the establishment of Alan Cox as de facto Linux networking lieutenant. Weber draws from an impressive array of firsthand accounts, including mailing lists, websites, conference speeches, and personal interviews.

I get some interesting trivia out of this, such as Larry McVoy's original Unix is dying troll (98). Unfortunately, since Weber's narrative is mainly topical, it is occasionally redundant in telling one story from multiple social angles. Other claims are close to flamebait, such as suggesting that Richard Stallman is an example of a "failed leader." (168)

For the second half of the book, Weber moves on to Explaining Open Source in the terms of his discipline, political economy. He sees two broad categories of principles to the Open Source process: Microfoundations, including individual motivations and the economic logic of the collective good; and Macro-Organization, solving the problems of coordination and complexity. (133) While I doubt each reader will catch every academic nuance in these chapters, Weber is thankfully sparing in his use of specialized vocabulary and writes his overall argument in clear, easy-to-follow logic.

This section also contains the most insightful observations in The Success of Open Source. While there are too many to list here, one is the concept of Open Source Software as antirival. As more copies are made and put into use, value increases as a result of a larger market and the small percentage of users that contribute bug reports and possibly patches. This turns the traditional "free rider" problem into an advantage.

Though Weber does not mention this in the text, one can see part of this principle in proprietary vendors' providing free downloads or turning their backs on rampant piracy. It also does not take a great leap of logic to see application of the antirival model to other fields such as music or academic research.

As is customary in social science literature, Weber uses his conclusion to both recap his argument and to raise questions for future direction of research. What is the best organization method for property distribution, as opposed to the current methods based on exclusion? How can the Open Source production process be used effectively to improve prospects for the developing world? What is the best way for closed, hierarchical systems to interact with open, network-based ones? While some of the issues involved are offtopic for this book, hopefully future work will examine these questions in depth.

Though Open Source has been mentioned in many recent works, The Success of Open Source is the first academic book that focuses on the Open Source community as its object of study. It gives a readable, thought-provoking, and occasionally funny account of what Open Source is and means, making it an extremely valuable resource for those who want to engage and discuss these issues on an intellectual level. As Weber states, his positive, constructive outlook "may not be fully satisfying, but it's not a bad place to start." (272)

Joshua Daniel Franklin is a graduate student at the University of Washington's Information School. This review may be redistributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. You can read the table of contents, preface, and an excerpt of the first chapter of The Success of Open Source at the Harvard University Press website. The reviewer's website has an list of errata. You can purchase the The Success of Open Source from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Easy on the hyperbole, pal

[goldspider]

"The results, he argues, would 'make the consequences of the first-generation Internet seem quaint.'"

Open source is great and all, but isn't this statement a bit over the top? It almost sounds like he's trying to sell something. Just MHO.

Re:Easy on the hyperbole, pal

[Random BedHead Ed]

You never know. The strength of the Internet has always been in providing access to information - more than in selling things or distributing media. Those things work, but getting information to the masses has always been the Internet's strong point. Who would have thought that this same medium would allow people to collaborate and build an operating system? Without the internet it wouldn't have happened, and now that operating system is a crucial part of what runs the Internet. We might look back on the development of the Linux kernel and other open source software as one of the strong points of the Early Internet.

Re:Easy on the hyperbole, pal

[scmason]

If we consider the fact that writing is never a neutral endeavor, then he is trying to sell something. He is trying to sell his idea and insight. At one time, a couple of hundred years ago a few people tried to sell the idea of open (free) capitolism, and it worked. The argument on open source is not just about whose operating system supports the most digital camera's. It is an attempt to convince the world that there may be a better method than the one that exists. It is NOT an attempt to overthrow the capitolist system, but a way to improve the current system through open standards.

Thank you for your ear.

scm

Come together, right now....

[AKAImBatman]

I have a question. Why should Open Source software and closed source software be at each other's throats? Shouldn't the two be cooperating more than fighting? Here's the advantages I see to each of them:

Open Source

• Spreads the cost of software across a large number of parties
• Encourages interoperability and standards support
• Prevents the wheel from being reinvented every day

Commercial/Closed Source

• More time focus on usability
• Quick response to critical issues
• More resources to throw at high quality software

These advantages are not mutually exclusive. Thus I might use Apache as my webserver because of its tremendous standards compliance and support, while I'll use Oracle for its scalability, performance, and corporate support. Instead of deciding that everything should be open or closed, let's focus on making things open when it makes sense, and supporting things that are closed when it makes sense.

Re:Come together, right now....

[tcopeland]

> while I'll use Oracle for its
> scalability, performance, and corporate support.

There's probably a size/performance metric floating around here too. For database under a terabyte, PostgreSQL is probably fine.

The question then becomes - how much data will I be packing into this database? If it's only a few hundred GB or so... PostgreSQL may be sufficient. And the customer will save a lot of money... good times.

Re:Come together, right now....

[AKAImBatman]

because they're different and opposite in philosophy

Says you and Stallman. The Apache people seem to think otherwise. And I'd say that they've done an exceedingly good job of making their point. As have the Mozilla people.

Stallman's philosophy is that every piece of software in existence should be free. That raises the question of who's going to pay for all the R&D, usability studies, artwork, customer support, etc? In Apache's case, a large number of interested corporations and individuals have helped foot the bill for a greater cause. Same for the Mozilla project, save that Netscape/AOL ate a large portion of the bill. RedHat, SuSE, and other commercial entities continually help foot the bill for GNOME, KDE, the kernel, dev tools, and other desktop development.

And yet, SuSE (wisely) held onto YaST and SAX long enough to give themselves an edge over the competition. If it was open source to begin with, what would SuSE's advantage have been?

The ideas are not mutually exclusive. Only the desire to not work together makes them mutually exclusive.

Re:Come together, right now....

[javax]

Are you working for Apple or what? =)

But serious: They (Apple) are playing this game very well - they released Darwin, support OpenDarwin, Konqueror, Fink, etc. while keeping their crown jewels (Quicktime, Quartz, Cocoa, ...) locked away.

And what do we get out of this hybrid approach? The best Desktop Unix ever. Lets hope more companies choose this approach!

Excellent use of /. mods.

[Chris Burke]

"...interesting perspective on the events."
"...Larry McVoy's original Unix is dying troll"
"...it is occasionally redundant in telling one story from multiple social angles."
"This section also contains the most insightful observations..."
"Other claims are close to flamebait..."
"However, Weber's ideas are timely and informative..."
"and occasionally funny account of what Open Source is and means,"
"While some of the issues involved are offtopic for this book, ..."

Now the only question remaining after this review is whether any portions of the book may be over or underrated. Also, knowing if the author has a karma bonus would help in what is otherwise a tie of positive and negative mods.

Consider open source in publishing, food & pha

[ebusinessmedia1]

The concept of open source is now thoroughly out of the box, and already moving into areas beside IT. Here are a few examples:

1) ""Researchers in Australia and India are sidestepping agriculture patents held by the likes of Monsanto and DuPont to develop competitive technologies and foods (such as a high-protein potato) that are, by design, open and unrestricted. In pharmaceuticals, India is skirting patents to create generic AIDS drugs that are orders of magnitude cheaper than those made by the transnational drug companies ..."
http://www.mediajunk.com/public/archives/200 4_01.h tml

also,
http://www.wacc.org.uk/modules.php?name=N ews&file= article&sid=815

2) The California Open Source Textbook Project www.opensourcetext.org has been created to provide open source printed books for K-12 students in California, and eventually the world.
www.opensourcetext.org

3) MIT's OpenCourseWare project has been created to provide free university curriculum to students
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

4) Wikipedia is a great example of open source content with it's many open source projects
www.wikipedia.org

There are many other examples, currently, of cooperative efforts to share intellectual capital.