451 CAOS Theory 
A blog for the enterprise open source community
How open is your open source vendor?
Matthew Aslett, May 19, 2008 @ 6:30 am ETThere was some interesting discussion following my post last week asking whether there is a growing rift between commercial open source software vendors and some aspects of the open source user community.
Amongst the comments, Chris Marino of SnapLogic suggested that some of the tension might be eased by open source software vendors being more upfront about their intentions via the publication of social contracts. Examples include the Debian Social Contract and also Funambol’s Open Source Project Social Contract.
As Chris noted, the problems come when companies start changing how they interact with open source communities. Nevertheless, this sort of contract at least lays out the ground rules so that users and developers know what sort of vendor they are involved with and have something definitive to refer to when disagreements arise.
If vendors are not proactive about writing and publishing declarative statements about their open source involvement, they may find that community users start judging them on the community’s terms. From Milking the GNU comes the suggestion that a new independent organization could be formed to judge vendors that claim to be open source on a number of criteria, such as patent policy, business model and development model.
“Equitable Open Source” as it is called, is only a suggestion at this stage, but is an example of the caution being expressed by some users towards commercial open source vendors. As the idea is described, it would at least create a level playing field upon which vendors can be judged.
This would help to avoid debates like this one, in which Baron Schwartz argues that MySQL is free software but not open source. His point is that the development model is not open.
While respondents have pointed out that, according to the Open Source Definition, MySQL is in fact open source, the fact is that the OSD only defines the license used to distribute the software, not the method used to develop it.
Simon Phipps has recently suggested adding open source patent and trademark definitions to the Open Source (Copyright) Definition. Does the industry need an open source definition for business and development models?
Comments (12) Categories: Business strategies,Licensing,Software
[...] Original post by [Technorati] Tag results for open social [...]
Matt, Tony Wasserman of CMU published an interesting study into this area last May http://tinyurl.com/6hjb8b.
It goes into the various dimensions of ‘open’ and analyzes several prominent projects.
More here: http://blog.snaplogic.org/?p=32
[...] analyst colleague Matthew Aslett from the 451 Group suggests that the idea of measuring projects considered open by the OSI definition according to a second set [...]
I am always confused a little bit by the spotlight put on companies that base their business around open source. If there is a project that is sponsored by a company that has a commercial offering it seems that the spotlight keeps being put on their business practices and not the software.
If the software adheres to the open source definition than there shouldn’t be a differentiator. If the organization provides support and services for open source software then they are an open source vendor and acts within the terms of the license than that should be good enough.
I am often struck by the importance placed upon the company especially when the community of users is empowered. Should they become unhappy they can easily fork the project at any time. If the companies don’t act responsibly that community can and will rise up against it. That’s the check and balance system that is in place and generally accepted.
Disclosure: I am the VP of Community at Zenoss
I agree the biggest issue here is transparency. If commercial open source organizations are proactive in communicating what is happening and why and providing the community a way to voice their opinions many problems can be avoided.
A contract or charter and a clearly defined contribution process could make it clear where the community stands. This would be of benefit for many open source projects as some of them are also hard to contribute to.
James Dixon, Chief Geek, Pentaho
[...] How open is your open source vendor? If vendors are not proactive about writing and publishing declarative statements about their open source involvement, they may find that community users start judging them on the community’s terms. From Milking the GNU comes the suggestion that a new independent organization could be formed to judge vendors that claim to be open source on a number of criteria, such as patent policy, business model and development model. [...]
[...] out there to shut up, so I urge you to have a look at the whole stir about organic Open Source, vendor openness, the role of communities and, generally speaking, Open Source sustainability as a [...]
[...] of open source vendors and realized I had failed to be as clear as I could have been in my original post on the [...]
[...] on the grounds of social responsibility. This in turn calls to mind Milking the GNU’s suggestion of an “Equitable Open Source” index by which to judge vendors on their patent policy, business [...]
[...] blogs resurrect a discussion that I previously mentioned here about whether the industry needs an open source definition for business and development [...]
[...] as previously noted, the OSD only defines the license used to distribute the software, not the method used to develop [...]
[...] have covered this ground before, but a debate ensued on Twitter that outgrew 140 characters. Hence this quick [...]