Archive for April 2009
The Principles behind Open Source
There are lots of definitions of open source. Most of them focus on the pragmatic consequences associated with open source. I would like to share with you the principles I believe lie behind open source.
People
People is the most important asset in open source. It is even more important than code. Code is just a response to the needs of people. The core of open source projects is communication between people: discussions in irc, issue reporting in bug tracker, support through forums, polls… The ‘release early, release often’ policy is a way of getting users feedback as soon as possible. Users are important. Developers are important. Everything rotates around people.
Values
Open source projects share a common set of values. These values have evolved into some tools and processes. Having a clear set of values makes taking decisions easier, leads you through a coherent path and allows the rest of the people know what to expect from you. The more loyal you are to your values, the smoother the path is. The difficult part could be choosing the right values, but that is already done in open source. You can find some of those values in the Openbravo Manifesto. You can search in google for more values (e.g., consensus, distributed model, legitimacy).
Abundance
Probably the main trait of open source is the abundance mentality of the people participating. The opposite of abundance mentality is scarcity mentality. People with scarcity mentality think that they are what they do and know; that if they give away what they do and share their knowledge, they are losing value. Scarcity mentality sees everything as a zero sum game. On the other hand, people with abundance mentality think they are what they can do; therefore, if they give away what they do, they are not losing value. The more value they create and deliver, the better. Abundance mentality means betting on your capacity of creating and delivering more value.
These principles are not unique to open source. Open source is just one possible implementation of these principles, but any business or project (open or not) could take advantage of these principles. You could use these principles to analyze your own business/project. Are you giving enough importance to all people involved in your project? Do you have a clear set of values that is shared by everyone in the project? Are you measuring your project by the capacity of creating and delivering value?
