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.

Re:Sounds like...

[ackthpt]

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?

No.

The way people in the american political system get elected, is the parties pick candidates to be picked apart by vultures, then one rigs the election system so they win in pivotal states with large numbers of "electors" who then are supposed to vote for so and so from their districts. In backwards countries, where vile dictators for life, parties labeled as terrorists, political strongmen and their machines all practice it works pretty much the same, but only american leaders are allowed to be critical of how the other countries process works.

Mob rule would mean people actually pick their candidates themselves and throw all their votes behind them and the one who actually gets the most votes wins.

Clearly we can't have that, so strong organizations, such as political parties are necessary to ensure we get what we deserve.

i believe in education -- i'll teach you all a lesson

Re:Sounds like...

[ackthpt]

It actually makes no sense given that there's no single entity responding to the mob. They act as individuals on individual pages. Mob rule might be the case if they're deciding on a single issue. But if you can't get a mob to even decide what issue they're deciding upon, then it's just a whole lot of people doing things.

Ah, but charismatic leaders can guide mobs and once they have enough of them in line, they can direct the mob against those who don't fall into step or question things. I believe Adolf Hitler

[!Error 53 - Godwin Invoked - Thread terminated]

Re:Sounds like...

[Ragica]

Couple of potential problems with this point of view.

• Charismatic manipulators (of marginal intelligence can sometimes use various means of manipulating large numbers of morons in ways that most more thoughtful persons would not stoop to. (This is leaving even more complex issues of proportional representation, and other weirdness elements of elections aside.)
• "using the history page" requires the target being defamed to know that they have a wikipedia entry. Anyone can go and add an entry about you and you may not know for some time. Someone may cunningly edit your entry, and you may not know for some time.
• most viewers won't use the history page, even if they did realise its purpose, because it's an extra click. Kind of like microsoft knowing almost everyone is going to use IE even though it sucks ass, just because it's what's in front of them.

This being said, I love Wikipedia, and use it several times a week. It's a great resource. But it does have some pretty big inherent problems due to its nature. No use in glossing over that fact.

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:Leadership

[Overly Critical Guy]

Funny, I thought Wikipedia is what it is today because of the frighteningly large number of people willing to explain Super Mario Bros. continuity or the mechanics of Klingon spaceships.

Check out Groklaw

[Anonymous Coward]

PJ over at Groklaw http://www.groklaw.net/ has this story.

The reporter interviewed her. She has his questions and her answers. He obviouly ignored what she told him and printed a story full of factual innacuracies.

This is bad, bad reporting. Do I still trust the Economist? Not much.

Re:Check out Groklaw

[tabdelgawad]

I don't understand Groklaw's beef. She (PJ) was asked two questions. Her first answer was one of the main points of the article: hierarchy is an integral part of successful open source development. Her second answer was a dodge: "You think Wikipedia is bad? The MSM is worse!". As for the factual inaccuracies, what exactly were they? The fact that the author didn't get the "groklaw-approved" exact wording right for telling us SCO is suing IBM, DaimlerChrysler and Autozone? Give me a break.

Perhaps I'm biased against Groklaw. Sometimes I can't take the world-weary, sighing, 'know all the answers', 'the rest of the world is idiotic' tone of the postings there. I'm sure I'll be punished accordingly by groklaw fans with mod points, but what use is good Karma if you can't cash it in once in a while? :)

Summary gets anarchism wrong

[HooliganIntellectual]

"It cites Firefox, MySQL and (more recently) Wikipedia as examples of projects that do not simply allow anarchy to rein in..."

As an anarchist geek, let me point out that this is a wrong use of the word "anarchy." Anarchism is a political philosophy that is FOR organization. Many people have described Wikipedia as an example of "anarchism in action" and they aren't misusing the word instead of using "chaos." The free software/open source (FOSS) movement is another example of anarchism in action and includes many actual anarchists working on various projects.

Find out more about anarchism at http://www.infoshop.org/ (where half of the visitors are using Firefox and other open source browsers)

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.

Re:Summary gets anarchism wrong

[Haeleth]

Except that anarchism, as a philosophy, has a serious theoretical basis in the works of Kropotkin, Bakunin, Proudhon, etc, which date back centuries.

Sorry, your Oxford dictionary is the definition that has been modified from its true original meaning.

Sorry, but you don't seem to know what you're talking about.

Kropotkin was born in 1842, Bakunin in 1814, and Proudhon in 1809, right? Well, the OED provides citations for "anarchy" in the sense of "lawlessness" dating back to 1539, and for "anarchy" in the sense of "moral or intellectual disorder" dating back to 1656.

If we assume that words have such a thing as a "true original meaning", then I would be inclined to say that the way the word was used in 1539 (and is still most commonly used today) is more likely to be the "true original meaning" than the way the word was used by a handful of philosphers in the 1850s. Unless you're about to propose that they invented the time machine as well?

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.

What never made sense to me

[K-Man]

If the guy was so offended, why didn't he just edit the Wikipedia entry to fix the mistakes?

Anarchy

[LeapingQuince]

It is unfortunate that the term anarchy has a dual meaning - the most common being "disorder". A more historical meaning is that of "without authority", which seems to be what open source is all about - nobody telling anybody else what to do.

Open source projects are the model of anarchist principles - people getting together, contributing when they want to, and promoting the common good. Even Wikipedia knows that.