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The vocabulary of open source development models
Matthew Aslett, June 26, 2008 @ 6:12 am ETJames Dixon has given the thumbs-up to my stretching his Bee Keeper analogy to explain open source development models (which is nice) and in doing so has suggested a new term to help quickly explain the difference between vendor- and community- dominated development projects.
The debate about the difference between the two approaches, and the language used to describe them, has been simmering for some time. For some background on it, and an explanation about why it matters, see Ted Ts’o’s post from April.
While the debate may seem like a matter of semantics I agree with Ted that it is important in terms of framing a user’s expectation and understanding of an open source project/product and its potential relationship with the vendor.
This is not to say that one approach is better than the other, but that for some adopters (both corporates and individuals) it is important to know that MySQL is the majority contributer to the development of its database and has the rights that go along with that, while other adopters may be more comforted in knowing that PostgreSQL has a broad and vibrant community.
My perspective is that it is important for (some) customers to be able to understand the distinction, and for that an agreed vocabulary is essential. For an example of why vocabulary is important, consider the role of Cathedral and the Bazaar in providing the industry a vocabulary with which to explain open versus closed development models.
It has occurred to me recently that open source is missing an agreed vocabulary for discussing both development and business models (I’ll leave the business models for another time). The problem, of course, is coming to an agreement.
In his initial post on the subject Ted used the terminology “organic” and “non-organic”, which does work, although as he discovered, some found the term non-organic a little pejorative.
An alternative, suggested by Alex Leverington and originally used in a Harvard business school paper (PDF) is “organic” versus “synthetic”.
While that terminology is probably more accurate it too has some potentially negative connotations. I personally have used the phrases “captive” and “community”, of which the former has obvious negative connotations as far as vendor-led projects are concerned.
In his post referenced above based on my stretching of the Bee Keeper analogy, James Dixon suggests “wild” versus “domestic” could potentially be considered derogatory as far as the community-led approach is concerned. Meanwhile, Ted’s request for suggestions generated a number of possibilities.
Here’s a list of the potential candidates I’ve identified. Take your pick, or feel free to suggest any others:
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Categories: Business models, Software
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Hi Matthew.
I wasn’t being entirely serious with my ‘wild vs domestic’ suggestion. But within the Beekeeper analogy this is essentially the difference. Its like going out into the forest to pick fruit vs planting an orchard.
Personally I like Organic vs Managed or Organic vs Directed.
I think it should be possible to come up with two terms that invoke the right feelings within different communities. To an open source purist ‘Managed’ sounds constraining and artificial, whereas to a conservative CIO ‘Organic’ sounds unstructured and risky.
James Dixon, CTO, Pentaho
What about Centralized and Diversified?
why not: vendor and community ??
Too simple. That’s exactly what they’ll be expecting us to use
[...] Beyond definitions, the way open source firms cope with their communities, and how their business is affected by the relationship, worth some attention. The relationships between firms and communities in open source software has been analyzed by very few academic papers so far. Dahlander and Magnusson in their paper “Relationships between open source software companies and communities: Observations from Nordic firms” distinguished three different approaches to handle the firm–community relationship: symbiotic, commensalistic, and parasitic. Managerial issues vary depending on the chosen approach. The symbiotic approach seem to be the most promising in terms of the possibility to influence the community, but firms adopting it are also confronted with challenging managerial issues related to decision rights and control. [...]
[...] has been sat on my desktop for several weeks as well as a recently published post regarding the vocabulary of development models. I think the definition of terminology used in open source is important to aiding the understanding [...]
[...] dilemma Matthew Aslett, July 28, 2008 @ 11:45 am ET Two interesting posts on the subject of vendor and community open source development have been published today by Stephen O’Grady and Matt Asay. First [...]
[...] the debate in 2008 was about what terminology to use to describe organic or non-organic communities, the focus [...]