I never expected so many responses to my thread. This has been an excellent discussion that I must admit has made me seriously challenge the idea that I had first formed and considered writing about.
For example, Dan Brickley made me realize that the same rules or standard could be applied to individuals and companies, not just to businesses. Stephen White affirmed my idea that the ability to fork open source code provides a restraint against totalitarian and heavy-handed management of an open source project. Randy George's post made me realize how important it is that the open source geospatial community continue to provide innovation and support for open standards, because the government and big corporate players seem to be dropping the ball. All of this is good stuff. I am curious what the list would think if I modified my original idea for an article somewhat. Let's say I drop any concept of a comparison standard or a rating system. Let's also say I concentrate not on evil companies abuse the management of an open source project, but instead talk about what a company can do right and what they might want to avoid. What if the title/theme of my article became "Going Open Source - Tips For Business On Successful Community Building"? The article could provide information for businesses that want to become involved in open source, and perhaps even release some of their code under open source, and are looking for some advice on how to manage that type or release in a way that will encourage the growth of a healthy user and developer community. Landon P.S. - I think there are still some issues here that deserve some more discussion. For example, the idea that "any open source code is good code" troubles me a little bit. Are we saying as a wider community that we don't care what a companies motives for releasing code is, as long as that code is released under an open source license? I wonder if there are still 2 "camps" in our open source world. There are some that approach open source from a very practical, business-oriented perspective. Then there are others that believe "open source" is part of a wider ideology based on cooperation, mutual respect, and similar ideas. I wonder if some behavior would be acceptable to the first group, but not at all acceptable to the second group. I also wonder which group I find myself in. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dan Brickley Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2007 3:48 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Geowanking] Measuring Open Source Citenzenship - Reconsidering Regarding "I'm not saying that what these companies are doing is wrong, but I think it is obvious that some companies are better open source partners than others." 1. it's far from obvious to me that there is a single simple ranking A company could be a fabulously good citizen in opensource terms, pouring millions into community, openness or whatever, ... yet have chosen to boost opensource for entirely competitive reasons, eg. to damage a rival in the marketplace, support a file-format that they've other investments in, or whatever. You mention that this might be considered "unethical". Others might consider it business as usual. How such scenarios are ranked is so subjective, that it becomes painfully simplistic to claim "betterness" is in the general case obvious. Of course there are some cases which are going to be obvious: If my company Semantic Web Vapourware Ltd releases my 1982 ZX81 classic 10 PRINT "DANBRI IS COOL" 20 GOTO 10 Under GPL (share & enjoy!) perhaps I'm being a lesser opensource citizen than say IBM; 50% of the lines in my public codebase are probably considered harmless, after all. And they may not be entirely original, either. But what practical purpose does such a ranking achieve? Is a company that ships the above code under GPL a "better" or "worse" opensource citizen than Microsoft? *who cares* :) 2. Why pick on companies? Same issues crop up with individuals and non-profit organizations such as universities. Some are better or worse at various aspects of ceding and sharing control, at communicating, at following through on promises, on balancing vanity and leadership, ... at making themselves understood. I really don't see much merit in pursuing quite this line of investigation. Sure, list some factors that work well or don't, in various contexts. But don't try to turn them into a single ranking, ... and note that many of those factors work just same for individuals who are opensourcing their personal works... cheers, Dan _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking Warning: Information provided via electronic media is not guaranteed against defects including translation and transmission errors. If the reader is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. 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