Unusual Open Source

Dumitru Erhan writes "The Economist has a special report on open-source. It analyzes the way open-source projects succeed and finds that a rigid, business-like organizational structure is of vital importance to the quality of the final product. It cites Firefox, MySQL and (more recently) Wikipedia as examples of projects that do not simply allow anarchy to rein in, but which have 'real checks and balances, and real leadership taking place'. There is also a discussion of open-source methods being applied to non-software projects." From the article: "Constant self-policing is required to ensure its quality. This lesson was brought home to Wikipedia last December, after a former American newspaper editor lambasted it for an entry about himself that had been written by a prankster. His denunciations spoke for many, who question how something built by the wisdom of crowds can become anything other than mob rule."

Comments

Sounds like...

[Needanewnick]

From the summary:

His denunciations spoke for many, who question how something built by the wisdom of crowds can become anything other than mob rule

Isn't that how people get elected?

Oh, I see what he means now.

Leadership

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is what it is today because of the large amount of people who care about it enough to fix vandalism. Not necessarily because of a centralized leadership.

Open source is successful because of the large number of people who have an interst in its success. Centralizing leadership might be helpful in some way, but I don't see it as the most important thing.

Re:Follow up

[dusik]

Many people still don't take the GNU project seriously. People often find it easier to keep their eyes shut than to have to change their beliefs in light of what they see.

I've shown people incredible stuff on my (Linux) PC, but often when they find out it doesn't run on Windows they continue to pretend it doesn't exist.

The Economist... only 20 years behind the times

[Colin Smith]

Good advertisement for your mag mates.

You see, one thing economists (and many, many others) get wrong time and time again, is self organisation... They just don't get it for some reason. The "bazaar" encourages, promotes lots of projects, lots of errors, lots of iterations, lots of dead projects and we get emergent behaviour out of that environment. These are projects which are strong, robust and evolutionary in that they will fill all of the niches in which they are needed. These projects are ... pulled ... in that there is a need for them... Traditional software is ... pushed ... in that there's a need for profit.

Re:The Economist... only 20 years behind the times

[greg_barton]

You see, one thing economists (and many, many others) get wrong time and time again, is self organisation...

And the amazing thing is that, if you say businesses should be regulated, they're very likely to yell, "NO! The market must be FREE! The market has WISDOM!" Then they go back to saying open source is socialism...

Cognitive dissonance ain't just for psychologists and Republicans anymore.

Re:Summary gets anarchism wrong

[Overly Critical Guy]

That's because language and therefore definitions reflect usage. Dictionaries are hardly "irrelevant" just because they contain common definitions you have some anal disagreement with society over.