The Goldfish Chronicles

In this months JDJ, Alan Williamson pointed out that the term ‘open-source’ does not match why most of us use it. In the same issue, a guest editorial by Kirk Pepperdine wondered why we are not allowed to see the discussions that went on behind the creation of the Tiger 1.5 release.

Alan suggests that ‘nominal licensing’ is the reason why we choose the particular products we choose. I contend that this is wrong as a) (L)GPL is not nominal and b) it’s not the real reason why we choose it. Harsh licensing is a reason not to choose a product, but as long as the licensing doesn’t hurt us it’s not a +ve reason.

I believe the reason why I always look for an ‘open-source’ product first is because I want products with an open community. Today I looked at two product sites, JIRA and Crystal Reports. They are a fine example….

JIRA is a great tool: the code is I’m sure a big mess, the features are not quite what I want, and some things are not quite as obvious as I want them to be, but the community behind it is great. This makes it a great tool. I use JIRA because their mail lists are populated by the developers of JIRA, and because they are friendly to other open communities, understanding that many open communities are also non-profit communities and offering licensing to match. I also use JIRA at work, because of the trust their openness has created.

Crystal are a different type of company though. Their website and the pitiful excuse for forums linked from there show that they are a closed community. The community is a resource from which they pull money and push new products out to. Questions on their forums sometimes go unanswered [even when repeated every few months it seems] and the information on their site is a marketing tool rather than a customer tool. I’m not going to like using Crystal I suspect.

So the trick isn’t open-source, that’s just an early 80s grumble that Stallman is still having. It’s open-communities [and I’m pretty sure people have said this all before].

The JCP need to get this. Companies need to get this. I don’t want to take part in your community if you’re turning me into a minion.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2003 at 10:29 pm and is filed under Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.