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Unusual Open Source

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the business-action-penguin-folk dept.

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."

8 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds like... by Needanewnick · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.
    1. Re:Sounds like... by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
      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]

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. Leadership by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Leadership by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      --
      "Sufferin' succotash."
  3. Check out Groklaw by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Summary gets anarchism wrong by HooliganIntellectual · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "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)

  5. Re:Follow up by dusik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Anarchy by LeapingQuince · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.