Openness: July 2003 Archives

In the July 7th, 2003 edition of HBS Working Knowledge, in The Organizational Model for Open Source, Mallory Stark interviews Siobhán O'Mahony who is an assistant professor in the Negotiation, Organizations, and Markets group at the Harvard Business School.

The article raises and discusses the possible negative implications of nonprofit organizations around the open source software activities, as well as the implications of corporate actors’ involvement in the open source software production.

In one of the responses O'Mahony states:

“Thus, hackers who contribute to the open source community are often intrinsically motivated.”

The article appears to equate to some extend the open source software production with hackers and hacker culture. While it is undeniable that ‘hackers’ have contributed greatly to the pool of open source software, open source is more than just what hackers contribute. It would not be surprising to hear that many who contribute to open source software do not consider themselves hackers, at least not in the sense and connotation the word ‘hacker’ is understood by the general public.

Even in Eric Raymond’s definition as it appears in this article, defining “hackers as those who love programming for the sake of doing it, for the sake of obsessively solving a problem”, it is hard to necessarily and exclusively equate hackers with contribution to the open source. Perhaps, many contribute to a particular open source software package for reasons (many of them) totally different than obsessiveness. Social contribution is one of them … not all contributors to open source are obsessive programmers … Besides, some who love programming do it obsessively by working for a company for a pay.

Peer recognition is purported as one of the main reason for contribution to open source. Needless to say, all people, everywhere, would like to be recognized for the work they do, whether it is open source of closed source.

Further, I’m a bit not clear as to where (and why) is the contradiction in crating nonprofit foundations to help in ‘managing’ the open source activities:

“So I suppose what can be considered to be contradictory is that many community-managed open source projects have incorporated and created nonprofit foundations with formal boards and designated roles and responsibilities”.

Open source is not about anarchy; at least it does not appear to be so. Thus, unless orderly communication, collaboration, and coordination can be achieved without a formal organizational structure, non-profit foundations can play a role to moderate the activities of the open source software productions. After all, software production requires order, planning, and understanding of roles and responsibilities, be it open source or closed source.

May the Source Be With You presents rather a convincing case that open source is more than just about software:

"Can a band of biologists who share data freely out-innovate corporate researchers?"

"But hoarding information clashes directly with another imperative of scientific progress: that information be shared as quickly and widely as possible to maximize the chance that other scientists can see it, improve on it, or use it in ways the original discoverer didn't foresee. "The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true," reads the Albert Einstein quote inscribed on a memorial outside the National Academy of Sciences offices in Washington."

"Fortunately, a potentially revolutionary counter-trend is developing and helping science return to the ideal that Einstein extolled. A small but growing number of scientists, most of them funded by the National Institutes of Health, are conducting cutting-edge research into the most complex problems of biology not in highly secure labs but on the Internet, for all the world to see. Called "open-source biology," this work is the complete antithesis of corporatized research. It's a movement worth watching--and rooting for."

In O'Reilly Gazes Into the Future of Open Source Peter Galli presents some of O’Reilly’s thoughts about the future of the open source. What is most interesting in O’Reilly’s presentation at the Oscon conference is the recognition that the open source is more than just about software. The open source software is just one practical instance of the open source philosophy. The article is not clear about the why, how and what they mean by paradigm shift:

“The new rules governing the Internet paradigm shift are based on the fact that an open architecture inevitably leads to interchangeable parts; competitive advantage and revenue opportunities move "up the stack" to services above the level of a single device; information applications are decoupled from both hardware and software; and lock-in is based on data and not on proprietary software, he said.“

However, they are perhaps on the right track suggesting that the competitive advantage in the future will not come from the proprietary hardware and the software, but from the higher levels in the information services products. The openness inevitably will lead the competitiveness in the upper stacks of information service delivery process.

Perhaps the content will matter more as it should… but then, what happens when the open source philosophy is applied to the content as well? Where will the competitive advantage come from if dealing with open content? Perhaps the processes around the content creation, organization, delivery and sharing? How about when this process becomes ‘open process’ as well? Interestingly, some of this open process is imbedded in the open source software already… hmmm…

From Democracy Design Workshop at New York Law School Awarded $80,000 Grant By Rockefeller Brothers Fund

"The Democracy Design Workshop (www.nyls.edu/democracyhome.php) is directed by Beth Simone Noveck, an associate professor of law at New York Law School, where she also directs the Institute for Information Law and Policy. She is a founding fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. The Workshop aims to be a meetinghouse for thinkers and practitioners who, through research, dialogue and design, explore how to use technology to strengthen democracy online and off."??

"We are delighted by the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation support for our work," Noveck said. "By using cutting-edge, open-source technology for the promotion of strong democracy, we can create a tool for the exchange of best practices and ideas in collaboration and participation, helping practitioners learn from and engage with one another." Noveck added, "The Inventory is our flagship civic innovation design project. It is the knowledge base to support our civic innovation endeavors and represents precisely the kind of interdisciplinary, problem-solving work that should be part of contemporary legal education."

From Teaching Computers to Work in Unison:

"The grid is widely regarded as the next stage for the Internet after the World Wide Web. The Web is the Internet's multimedia retrieval system, providing access to text, images, music and video. The promise of the grid is to add a problem-solving system."
...
"Our belief was that open source was the best way to maximize adoption," he said. "Globus is an infrastructure technology, and it is only going to be successful if everyone uses it. And if you're doing something that is primarily funded by the government, sharing the software seemed the most appropriate thing to do."

Apparently, the difference between grid computing and distributed computing is in the ability to provide for 'collective' problem solving.

In It All Adds Up the notion of calculations as knowledge assets is presented as novel and unique process in KM:

"Specifically, MathSoft is promoting the idea of using its technology to facilitate what it calls calculation management—the practice of viewing engineering calculations as knowledge assets that should be managed and reused."

Aren't the folks at CIO magazine a bit late in their 'discovery'? Mathcad calculations put up on an Intranet for a use by a community of engineers are nothing more than scripts (or processes) for performing certain functions--to produce some sort of output(s) given the set of inputs. The open source movement has been doing this for how long? :)

Relatively speaking, for a corporate culture context where knowledge (in form of scripts/calculations here) is perhaps not easily shared by individuals due to fear of loosing some advantage, this could be considered a unique knowledge management practice.

The Center of Open Source & Government at egovos.gov

In my previous papers (media & communication) I tried to show that the open source concept/phenomenon and its communicative elements are innovative ideas, giving rise to open communication technology, enabling the masses to communicate free from elite’s control, possibly acting as antidotes to hegemonic ideology. To do so, I applied the constitutive view of communication, suggesting that open source is enabler of ‘free dissemination’ and open communication.

Recognizing Ranganathan’s five laws of Library Science and their underlying concepts as powerful inspirations for social change, I would like analyze the open source software, as defined by the Open Source Initiative (OSI), and its congruency with the five laws. If the underlying concepts upon which the five laws are built had such profound impact on our society, then the proponents of the open source movement can learn a thing or two. The actual definition of open source software is a lengthy one; instead, a summarized definition from the OSI’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) follows:

“Open source promotes software reliability and quality by supporting independent peer review and rapid evolution of source code. To be OSI certified the software must be distributed under a license that guarantees the right to read, redistribute, modify, and use the software freely” (The OSI).

A ‘book’ is the basic element of Ranaganathans laws: it contains objective knowledge. This calls for defining the comparative basic element of software development. Therefore, I will take the term ‘software’ to be the basic element: it contains objective knowledge. I have used the term ‘software’ loosely as it can mean a software product or software modules that can be used to build other software products. Respectively, the Five Laws of the ‘Software Library’ could be:

In my previous assignment there was no clear focus on my research interest, rather, I presented set of issues in regards to open source as software development process as well as a movement. I am narrowing my research interest by focusing on open source innovation and its elements as possible antidotes to hegemonic ideology. I would like to bring to attention the definition of open source software as defined by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The actual definition is a lengthy one; instead, a summarized definition from the OSI’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) follows:

“Open source promotes software reliability and quality by supporting independent peer review and rapid evolution of source code. To be OSI certified, the software must be distributed under a license that guarantees the right to read, redistribute, modify, and use the software freely” (The OSI).

This philosophical stance is in clear contrast with closed source, corporate software production where the source code is centrally controlled and it is not available to anyone outside the company. Only a handful of programmers can modify it, where any distribution of the source code—if at all—outside the company is restricted by proprietary licenses.