The Open Source Road Ahead: Individuals matter
Jim Jagielski, Simon Phipps and Mark Radcliffe at OSBC unveiled OSI plan during the “A New OSI for a New Decade: Rebooting the Open Source Initiative OSI” session (presentation). Some reports stressed the importance of organizations, but volunteers are welcome too!
In Simon words:
OSI is switching to a representative governance. While we’ll be creating affiliate schemes for organisations during the year, we already have the groups where individuals can get involved. You could:
- Join in with the Infrastructure Working Group to help run OSI’s web site and mail server;
- Join the Communications Working Group and help write or translate news releases;
- Participate in the license-review mailing list;
- Watch for news of the other working groups as they are revamped.
Individuals matter, especially within open source organizations (Apache Foundation and many other organizations docet). The personal affiliate scheme will allow OSI to effectively empower working groups, as Andrew Oliver – Apache POI founder and OSI board member – nicely explained to me.
Yes most of the OSI’s business will be carried out by working groups. The board will become mainly supervisory and members of the working groups can vote on the board members and/or become chairs of those to be nominated to the board. Oh and a key piece is the board becomes far less important. A key problem with the current system is the board is also the workforce.
Historically the workforce has been an issue, a much more serious one than the fear of subversion, a ‘classic’ within the context of free open source software organizations.
OSI can make a lot to promote open source, ranging from put an end to vendor lock-in to join the open core debate and help to make things clearer for users and customers. Rob Bearden and Peter Fenton of Benchmark Capital put a clear definition between open source & “enterprise†among must have for open source vendors (a things that few of them do, actually).
OSI could create a website section to enlist companies who make clear what is (and what is not) open source, given them a chance to get a free ad for their business simply by sticking to certain communication rules.
Links 24/5/2011: More Linux Tablets (MeeGo and Android), LibreOffice Engineering Steering Committee | Techrights 7:08 pm on May 24, 2011 Permalink
[…] The Open Source Road Ahead: Individuals matter Jim Jagielski, Simon Phipps and Mark Radcliffe at OSBC unveiled OSI plan during the â€A New OSI for a New Decade: Rebooting the Open Source Initiative OSI†session (presentation). Some reports stressed the importance of organizations, but volunteers are welcome too! […]
Andrew C. Oliver 7:55 pm on May 24, 2011 Permalink
I’m very interested in your idea of creating an enhanced certification. I’m not sure whether this should be part of the communications working group or some kind of marketing and branding or trademark working group. I also believe that we need a consumer focused marketing and branding effort.
Ludovic Dubost 5:10 pm on May 31, 2011 Permalink
Hi,
We at XWiki (http://www.xwiki.com and http://www.xwiki.org) would welcome and support any initiative to create additional certifications or labels for open source software.
We have seen too much variance between open source vendors in their involvement in Open Source and particularly over time. It’s easy to be commited to Open Source when you start and when you look for backing and support. But this commitment should be sustained over time.
Some business models of vendors lead to gradually less commitment to open source, while others show a strong commitment over time.
Many licences allow this (Double licences or very open licences), while others LGPL have great balance between freedom and long term commitment by all participants.
We believe at XWiki that we are very commited both in terms of business mode and in terms of licence (LGPL).
But indeed there is a lack of certification that actually makes it something visible to our community, users and clients. Many users don’t see the difference between a light commitment and a strong commitment, so how could they actually analyze if the vendors will “have to” commit over time or if it’s only be their own decision to continue their commitment to Open Source.
Labels that certify these commitments would be great !