TWiki's hunt for cash fractures its community

Can an open-source project be acquired against its will? Apparently, the answer is "yes," as the recent experience of the TWiki community demonstrates.

In this case, TWiki.net (the company) has taken over Twiki.org (the project), booting all nonemployee contributors from the core project, leaving the TWiki.org community fuming (and forking).

In fact, the TWiki.org community is calling it a "hostile takeover," and the name may well be apt, though no shares have changed hands. TWiki.net has sought to reform the TWiki.org community under the auspices of the Relaunch Twiki.org Project, but it's not clear that this kind of reform was needed, at least from the community's perspective.

TWiki.net, however, begs to differ. The company suggests that its new governance model is based on Ubuntu, and is designed to foster clearer direction and better brand protection. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen's classic line to Dan Quayle, "I know Ubuntu, Mr. TWiki, and you're no Ubuntu."

Indeed, while Ubuntu seems to be in no hurry to turn a profit, it is almost certainly a desire for cash that has spurred TWiki.net's overhaul of the TWiki.org governance model. Founded in 1998 by Peter Thoeny, the company raised a small series A funding round in early 2007 and has been on the prowl for more funding in 2008. The company almost certainly needs more cash.

Does it also need more community? If so, it chose the wrong way to go about it.

Back when Thoeny spun up a company around the TWiki.org open-source project, some within the TWiki.org community worried that the move would damage its community, concern that now seems fully justified:

TWiki.NET (the commercial off-shoot) rolled over the open source project like a tsunami. TWiki.NET would strengthen the community, but forgot to respect existing structures. Without hesitation their marketing-department came with slogans that claimed work of the many volunteers that contributed over the years as their own.

Today, TWiki has fractured its community, much as Compiere once did when it neglected to remember the community that fed it (and gave birth to Adempiere and Openbravo in the process). NextWiki has emerged as the community's response.

Was it the right thing to do for Thoeny? Time will tell, but most VCs that I know are reluctant to touch an open-source project that lacks a vibrant community, or has the potential for one. TWiki is now radioactive. In an apparent attempt to make itself ripe for venture investment, TWiki.net may have gone sour.

TWiki.net's (likely) failed experiment with commercializing TWiki.org should be a lesson to any VC or entrepreneur hoping to commercialize an open-source project. There are good examples to follow (e.g., Acquia with Drupal.org, or Red Hat with the Linux kernel), and then there are bad examples (e.g., the Compiere debacle mentioned above).

It's impossible to please all community members all of the time within any given project, but when one's actions antagonize a majority...that's not only bad community outreach, it's bad business.

Disclosure: I know and deeply respect Tom Barton, TWiki.net's interim CEO and chairman. I'm also an adviser to MindTouch, an open-source Wiki collaboration company. I honestly didn't think of either fact when writing this, as the lesson learned from TWiki.net/.org is bigger than any particular product competition.

[gmc2000]

A small factual error: TWiki.net was not founded in 1998, as the article suggest, but in 2007.

[The_Decider]

It will either work or blow up in their faces. Either way who really cares?

[Penguinisto]

Dunno... I remember using TWiki in 2007. It's good at what it does (Wikis), but limited everywhere else.

Also, Matt: twiki.org has been around longer than twiki.net.

[c|net Reader]

TWiki is good at Wikis, but limited everywhere else. That would seem to be a good thing. Why should a product be good at things other than what it is supposed to do?

I've been using TWiki-based Wikis at work for years and like it a great deal. There was already an effort to look elsewhere for some of the things people want -- well beyond Wiki -- so this may just increase the priority of the replacement search. There was certainly enough chafing at work about what couldn't be done with TWiki -- unlike MS products, it doesn't try to do everything in one product -- that there would be no incentive to pay TWIKI.NET for future versions.

[martin_seibert]

Foswiki 1.0 is out: The TWiki-fork has released its first version

Hello Matt,

I am a member of the Foswiki-Community and one of your readers. I thought, that you might be interested to know, that we, the Foswiki-community have release Foswiki 1.0. Foswiki is the sucessor of TWiki and together with TWiki one of the leading enterprise wikis around. Foswiki is a non-commercial, true open source project. It would be of great honor for us, if you would cover our release with an article.

Please find our official press release "Foswiki 1.0 is out - Welcome to Foswiki, the successor to TWiki!" in English, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, ... at http://foswiki.org/Community/InitialReleasePressRelease. It contains a lot of useful information, that might be helpful for you. Further material about the project and all details can be found on our website at http://foswiki.org.

Will you write about us?

Best regards

Martin Seibert
Foswiki member

[datafront]

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[datafront]

Martin Eakes and coupled with its partner organization the Self Help credit union headed The Center for Responsible Lending, is a bit of a misnomer. This center promotes mortgage loans to be made by people whom turns out, irresponsible to lend to. They?ve made their propaganda machine on the cash advance industry, recently restricted in Ohio by the Small Loan Act, and when cash advance lenders there found legal means to stay in business, they started screaming about it in a most child-like fashion. It?s really hard to believe they really are a <a href="http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2009/03/09/center-for-responsible-lending-2/">Center for Responsible Lending</a>.