read "Sustaining Open Source Software"

[chadwhitacre]

https://medium.com/@stephenrwalli/sustaining-open-source-software-4a62a4b6d0f3

(h/t, iirc)

[chadwhitacre]

This is great stuff.

Paying someone that can fry an egg doesn’t make them a chef. Putting someone that can cook a meal at home in a professional kitchen doesn’t make them a better cook.

I learned about this on the FOSS Funders call yesterday after sharing "Open Source is a Restaurant."

[chadwhitacre]

He goes on to talk about foundations, next up: "The Rise and Evolution of the Open Source Software Foundation."

TIL OpenLogic (proto-Tidelift?). Also Perforce still exists.

[chadwhitacre]

Relevant-seeming from his Medium:

2016-03-21 – My History of Free and Open Source Software
2016-10-25 – There is NO Open Source Business Model
2018-10-17 – There is Still NO Open Source Business Model
2019-01-08 – Sustaining Open Source Software ⬅️
2020-02-02 – Software Freedom in a Post Open Source World

I also find stephesblog.blogs.com that trails off in 2015, so it seems like he switched platforms.

[chadwhitacre]

Stephen's own summary of "The Rise and Evolution of the Open Source Software Foundation":

Paula Hunter and I offered rationale for the foundation amplification when we were executive and technical directors at the Outercurve Foundation. What might be the cause of the amplification? We believe it comes from the one thing ALL foundations do for their stakeholders around their projects. Foundations exist at the behest of their stakeholders to make clear the IP management requirements and provide IP risk mitigation. The project community must be well run from engineering and governance perspectives, but once a foundation exists, corporate participants have a clear on ramp for participation and the investment in the community can grow substantially.

[chadwhitacre]

https://medium.com/@stephenrwalli/sustaining-open-source-software-4a62a4b6d0f3#42ff:

Many want to blame burnout, a failing business, the dumpster fire in the data centre, and the competitive landscape on ‘open source sustainability.’ If only ‘open source’ was organized differently, lives would be balanced, businesses would be booming, the software would just work, and competition headaches would be replaced with ‘coopetition’.

/me raises hand

I don’t see this as a solvable set of problems from an open source software perspective.

🤔

He proceeds:

Collaboration in communities follows well understood societal patterns. [...]

Software has been democratized along with all the other digital artefacts. [...]

Businesses solve problems for customers for money. [...]

Lastly, businesses will compete for customers as they always have. [...]

The trouble with ‘open source software sustainability’ ultimately is that open source licensed software has become so ubiquitous and successful in the software world in general that we often mistake software problems for ‘open source’ problems. By recognizing the underlying societal, software or business dynamic at play in each sustainability situation, we can better solve for the real sustainability problems at hand.

☝️ That's the conclusion. Reviewing the intro:

The sustainability debates seem to fall into one of several buckets:

• Commercial collaborations working diligently to identify significant projects in which to invest member resources: [...]
• Individual project participants in the long tail working to manage their project efforts against other commitments and responsibilities: [...]
• End users just trying to get work done: [...]
• Startup companies creating open source licensed software projects that are struggling with competitors and users solving their problems in the open source project community instead of paying the company for product/service. [...]

[chadwhitacre]

Stated outline:

I will:

1. discuss software collaboration history,
2. how the Internet fundamentally changed the nature of the collaboration network,
3. a couple of models and metaphors for how to think about software delivery at scale and how people really behave in a community and
4. finally come back to the four faces of the sustainability discussion.

[chadwhitacre]

https://medium.com/@stephenrwalli/sustaining-open-source-software-4a62a4b6d0f3#188e

With these models and history in mind, let’s walk back through the list of ‘open source’ sustainability concerns.

‘Open Source’ Start-ups: [...]

‘Open Source’ End Users: [...]

‘Open source’ project maintainers: [...]

Modern Foundations: [...]

[chadwhitacre]

Alright, so I have a focused definition of Open Source sustainability:

Open Source sustainability is when any smart, motivated person can produce widely adopted Open Source software and get paid fairly without jumping through hoops.

How does this relate to Stephen's four buckets?

1. ‘Open Source’ Start-ups—Sure, this is nominally a sustainability issue, but I tried to fold licensing and funding narratives together and it's not where we're headed. Instead, Fair Source is our answer here, and it's essentially ceding the argument that, while still rooted in our values, this is no longer Open Source.

2. ‘Open Source’ End Users—If we're bucketing Heartbleed and XZ and such here, then I see these as events that shine a light on the core sustainability issue without being the core sustainability issue. Using the restaurant analogy that Stephen and I are both working with in different ways, this is like when a server drops a glass and it breaks and the whole restaurant turns their heads, and (in my analogy) is reminded once again that the server is in fact an uncompensated volunteer. All software will have critical security vulnerabilities sometimes. Eliminating them is not the goal. Reducing them is a half-goal. Fairly paying people to voluntarily address them is the goal.

3. ‘Open source’ project maintainers—This is the closest to the core issue I want to focus on with my definition. "This is the cooking metaphor, pure and simple. You have to choose. You have to commit. Are you cooking for pleasure, or do you want to work in a restaurant?" I'm don't resonate with his conclusion to this section: "None of these are ‘open source sustainability’ problems. They’re problems with how individual developers relate to projects, build communities, and organize their work." In my view, that is precisely the crux of the Open Source sustainability crisis, because community is at the heart of Open Source, not just efficiencies for business. There's something to unpack here, which also relates to ...

4. Modern Foundations—Stephen's conception of foundations is as business consortia. He uses the word "community" a lot in the post, but does not say much about the relationship between foundations and communities. "There is no scale in software without discipline." Sure. I want foundations to steward communities of autonomous individuals while providing the "discipline" that users, especially corporate users and, increasingly, government (CRA, EO 14028) are trying to demand from Open Source.

---

Here is his conclusion:

Many want to blame burnout, a failing business, the dumpster fire in the data centre, and the competitive landscape on ‘open source sustainability.’ If only ‘open source’ was organized differently, lives would be balanced, businesses would be booming, the software would just work, and competition headaches would be replaced with ‘coopetition’.
[...]
The trouble with ‘open source software sustainability’ ultimately is that open source licensed software has become so ubiquitous and successful in the software world in general that we often mistake software problems for ‘open source’ problems. By recognizing the underlying societal, software or business dynamic at play in each sustainability situation, we can better solve for the real sustainability problems at hand.

I think what he's saying is that he doesn't want to call "open source sustainability" any one of the four sustainability challenges he considers. They're real challenges, but he wants to use other names.

[1] The troubles start-ups are having that are re-licensing their software (e.g. Docker, Redis Labs, MongoDB, now Confluent) aren’t ‘open source’ problems. They’re business model design problems.

[2] Again, this isn’t an ‘open source sustainability’ question, but rather a business question for 3rd party procurement and consumption.

[3] None of these are ‘open source sustainability’ problems. They’re problems with how individual developers relate to projects, build communities, and organize their work.

[4] None of these problems are ‘open source sustainability’ problems. They’re business ecosystem competition problems.

I don’t see this as a solvable set of problems from an open source software perspective.

I'm fine to entirely carve off (1). (3) is what I want to tackle under the heading of "The Open Source Sustainability Crisis," with implications and consequences for (2) and (4). Why does Stephen not want to use the name "open source sustainability" for (3)? 🤔

[chadwhitacre]

My conclusion is that "Sustaining Open Source Software" has some good framing and history, but gets it wrong that all four sustainabilities are problems with software in general, and therefore not properly characterized as Open Source problems.

The trouble with ‘open source software sustainability’ ultimately is that open source licensed software has become so ubiquitous and successful in the software world in general that we often mistake software problems for ‘open source’ problems.

The problems with community, the relationship between individuals and projects, are unique and essential to Open Source.

They’re problems with how individual developers relate to projects, build communities, and organize their work.

These are not problems germane to software generally. Microsoft Windows does not have these problems. These are unique and essential to Open Source. "Open Source sustainability is when any smart, motivated person can produce widely adopted Open Source software and get paid fairly without jumping through hoops." I'm sticking with it.

[chadwhitacre]

P.S. re: "My History of Free and Open Source Software":

The language of software freedom is defined by the rights of users. The language of open source software is defined by attributes of a license. These are different discussions.

How are they different discussions? The attributes of the license are precisely designed to encode software freedom. They were the "Debian Free Software Guidelines" before they were the "Open Source Definition."

Non-profits can provide the level-playing field and neutrality of IP ownership that enables dedicated company investment in a well-run open source project.

They can and should also have a role in providing both a) the disciplined software development process that end-users require and b) the collaborative autonomy that individual contributors require.

Projects are NOT products. A product is something that solves a customer’s problem for money. While a lot of excellent software can come out of a well-run open source project that relieves some of the work for engineering, there is enormous work still to be done to turn it into a problem-solving product for customers.

Really? I once bought a shrink-wrapped copy of Borland Turbo Pascal at a mall. Python very much feels like a problem-solving product to me.

[chadwhitacre]

P.P.S. I also skimmed "There is NO Open Source Business Model" and "There is Still NO Open Source Business Model." I generally agree. Hence, Fair Source.

[chadwhitacre]

P.P.P.S. Re: "Software Freedom in a Post Open Source World"

I remember when Tim O’Reilly argued that Freedom Zero was a creator’s right to choose their licensing terms for their work, attempting to set a broader societal context for software and the freedoms. The Freedoms were quickly re-based to zero to narrow the context once again to a discussion of software and the freedoms defining Free Software.

Interesting. Reminds me of Jordan's quip, "i asked stallman once if users should have the freedom to choose proprietary software." 😏

[chadwhitacre]

I want that same boldness and courage shown in the creation of the Free Software Foundation and the declaration of software freedom to be shown by all the companies that are concerned with how the software they ‘freely publish’ is being used by people not paying for it. You could create a software business association that would stamp out such unfair practices. You might boldly create a business friendlier licensing regime that wraps itself around the existing license attributes embodied in the OSD. But while you boldly [re-]create the Shared Source Initiative, ask yourself why Microsoft quietly walked away from it, and gradually learned to engage in software collaboration under licenses that are OSI approved, and ultimately free software licenses.

[...] I would encourage those that want to change the status quo to go forth — be bold. But also, be creative. Be new. Don’t break something that is clearly working for the rest of us in our software collaborative communities.

Heh. :)

[chadwhitacre]

... aaaaaaand "The Rise and Evolution of the Open Source Software Foundation":

Most of these tools are provided by modern internet-based forge sites (e.g. SourceForge, Codeplex, Github).

Heh. :)

[chadwhitacre]

FOSS foundations as organizations rely on the donations or dues of members and a volunteer workforce to get much of the work done, regardless of their non-profit organization.

[chadwhitacre]

When vendors invest in a non-profit trade organization, their expectations as members are different than what they would expect from a tax-deductible donation to a non-profit charitable organization. In addition to formal governance and operational support, members expect a staff to help drive programs and marketing. This staff can be comprised of full-time employees, employees assigned from member companies, and staff from firms that provide association management services (AMC). The Outercurve Foundation employs a hybrid model, with several full time staff members, while leveraging an AMC to provide financial, operational, administrative, and program management functions. This model allows the foundation to be nimble and scale as its project portfolio grows. Regardless of the staffing model, membership driven FOSS trade organizations are more expensive non-profits to operate than volunteer led charitable organizations working for the public good.