Tuesday August 22, 2006

Open source means closed communities.

Get your attention?

Why do I state that OSS communities are closed communities?

• Because they are designed and created primarily for only one constituency: programmers.
• Programmers are also defined as the "user".
• Without influence one cannot impact an OSS community.
• Influence is gained through contributions.
• Contributions are defined as code putbacks.
• Code putbacks are done by programmers.

The above is a synopsis of the model for a typical open source community. Its a model that promotes a closed community culture. The meritocracy is not open to other skill sets by the nature of how contributions are defined and influence is gained.

Now that I have thoroughly annoyed you with the above statements, I will point out that not all OSS communities follow the above model. As the OSS movement has evolved, contributions have been broadened to include things like documentation or specificiations. Governance policies have been written to broaden what is meant by "user". Module putback requirements have been changed to include testing, user experience, and docs.

However, I seriously wonder if that goes far enough. Rather then focusing primarily on the programmer, what about creating a community that focuses on product teams?

Why do this? Because just broadening some definitions and requirements does not address how other skill sets work within a product team. Documentation has a different work process then user experience design who have a different work process then engineering.

The real challenge is how to create a community that supports participation by many different skill sets in such a way that all parties can contribute and gain influence.

Hmmmmmmm. Does that mean that a QA engineer might just have more influence than a programmer one day?

[evil laugh]