Sun

Jul 30
2006

Tim O'Reilly

Tim O'Reilly

What Happens to Open Source When the Money Comes

Robert Kaye blogged the same OSCON session I wrote about on Friday, What Happens When the Money Comes, and captured a few good anecdotes that I left out of my account. (Robert also did an interesting post on OSCON's focus this year on "meta" topics like open data and on the art of community, something that is dear to his heart as the founder of MusicBrainz. Both entries are well worth a read.)

However, I wanted to expand on Robert's retelling of my story about a signature open source moment I experienced at an X Consortium meeting sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. It was a moment that made clear, as Robert notes, that open source is about individual responsibility, not corporate responsibility, even in a setting where corporations formally hold the power. As many may remember, the only voting members of the Consortium were the corporate sponsors, even though it was what we now call an open source project.

In the meetings, there would be great developer debate, but from time to time, one of the representatives would (apologies to Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light) put on his "corporate aspect." His posture would change, the timbre of his voice would deepen, and he would shift to the third person. Rather than "I think," he would say "Apollo believes" or "Digital believes."

One time, the representative from Digital, I think it was, said "Digital believes..." and then caught himself, and said, "I don't care what Digital believes. This is the wrong technical decision. I support..." and switched his vote. I don't remember the issue, and I don't remember who that brave soul was, but it always struck in my mind as a very special story.

Even when the money comes, individuals still stand up for what is right. And that individual act of commitment is very close to the heart of open source, and a great deal of what else is right in the world.


tags: open source  | comments: 5   | Sphere It
submit:

 
Previous  |  Next

0 TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blogs.oreilly.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/4816

Comments: 5

  Thomas Lord [07.31.06 01:08 PM]

I wonder if it isn't myopic to evaluate the "What happens [...] when money" question just by looking at individual open source projects.

Tim, about this Web 2.0 thing: what do you think about the view that "particatory architure" comes straight out of FLOSS practices? In other words, crude approximations of many Web 2.0 hits started life as what the FLOSS community was doing to itself, and then it got generalized for a larger market.

Some people have noticed that a lot of the user experience of Web 2.0 is the creation of opportunities to "see and be seen" in very specific ways. It isn't just participation in some vague barn-raising sense -- it's participation that has to do with defining our social selves.

One thing that happens when money hits open source is that the technocrats start "hacking the self" in a way that makes a 20th century Madison Ave. look amateurish, in this view.

I started writing an essay on this. (It will take weeks, at least, to complete. But here's a hopefully interesting snapshot.)

-t

  Tim O'Reilly [07.31.06 06:56 PM]

Tom -- I agree 100% that "participatory architecture" comes right out of FLOSS. It was by thinking about the real meaning and application of those principles that I came up with the observations that we've now come to call Web 2.0.

As to participation and defining our social selves -- I agree that that's definitely part of it. But there's a lot of participation that has nothing to do with what's visible. For example, when Shawn Fanning set the default for Napster to be "serve as well as consume" when he released it, he harnessed the architecture of participation even though many of the users weren't even that conscious of the way they were building the network.

But it's a really good observation nonetheless.

  Thomas Lord [07.31.06 10:51 PM]

I'm not so sure that lack of total awareness of what participation entails (as per napster) really contradicts what I'm saying. Arguably it reinforces it.

In keeping with the theme, my own hacked self wants to drop in a link to an essay I'm working on on the topic.

-t

  chromatic [08.01.06 12:56 AM]

Does the motivation come from FLOSS, or does it go more directly to Metcalfe's Law? (Or was there a deeper philosophy that led the Internet's designers to produce a system that promoted participation along even the edges?)

  Andrew [07.29.07 08:50 AM]

As to participation and defining our social selves -- I agree that that's definitely part of it. But there's a lot of participation that has nothing to do with what's visible

Post A Comment:

 (please be patient, comments may take awhile to post)






Type the characters you see in the picture above.