visible artifacts

By: Chris Malek

Sep 23 2008

Category: Articles

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Folk definitions of “open source communities are” and “open source communities are not”, compiled by using Google to search for those phrases and recording what I found in the first 100 links.

open source communities are

…     are an entangling ground: ground which can be abandoned but is hard to re-occupy.
…     made up of volunteers.
…     groups of sometimes hundreds if not thousands of individuals with different interests, backgrounds and motives
…     about sharing
…     anything but ad-hoc formed
…     sponsored by commercial entities
…     increasingly creating their own adverts and branded content
…     exploring prorietary development (or, at least, release) methodologies
…     primarily made up of volunteer contributors, but company involvement is always welcome.
…     founded on good code, good people, and good licenses.
…     are collections of geographically distributed individuals, who volunteer or are paid to participate in the development of highly innovative software programs.
…     driven oft times by essentially blind interactions between nearly anonymous parties
…     innovative online communities, some of which have recently attracted increasing attention.
…     driven by values
…     all about fair play and being a good citizen
…     often global in scale
…     a mess
…     in constant evolution
…     evolving and require a collaboration platform partner that can support the overlapping needs of members of multiple communities

open source communities are not

…     not serious enough
…     not like software vendors.
…     created equal
…     just about the code
…     unfriendly to business
…     experienced in actually working with a diverse set of people
…     paid
…     “open” communities
…     traditional nonprofits that are obviously doing charitable work, but a good case can be made for why you deserve an exemption
…     for sale
…     static
…     about a single person
…     democracies
…     truly egalitarian
…     our competitors
…     made collectively but rather individually