Apres open source, le deluge?

When Louis XV sneered disdain for the fate of France after his reign ("Apres moi, le deluge"), he uttered a sentiment that finds absolutely no purchase within the open-source community. Whatever its problems, the open-source world cares passionately about its principles, processes, and prospects. Insouciance is in short supply within the open-source community.

For this reason, we're at a critical moment in the history of open source, the moment when we can firmly declare, "Open source has won."

No, it has not "won" in the sense that all software is released under an open-source license, and it has not "won" in the sense that its most vocal critics (e.g., Microsoft) have fallen in line and declared its supremacy.

But open source has won in the sense that it has gone from being the pariah of software to the foundation or a critical element of virtually all software deployed today.

Along the way, open source has picked up some habits (bad or good, depending on your perspective) from its proprietary peers, as Savio Rodrigues notes, and it has in turn influenced the way most software is developed.

In fact, open source has become so successful that it is rapidly assimilating into the wider software world, becoming both more important and less distinct, as The Economist recently noted:

Indeed, open source is so widely accepted that traditional software firms are beginning to dabble in it, while some open-source firms are starting to sell proprietary add-ons to open-source programs instead of charging to provide support to firms using open-source software. If current trends hold, traditional software firms and their open-source rivals will soon be hard to tell apart.

This prompts The 451 Group's Matt Aslett to ask, "Now that open source is an industry-wide accepted development and licensing strategy, where does open source go from here?"

It's a non-trivial question, especially for a community so intent on succeeding in the right way. But not to fear: Tim O'Reilly, as is so often the case, provided the answer years ago when he declared open-source licensing issues to be somewhat tired and largely beside the point.

Open source qua open source is a secondary issue. The larger issue is how to apply the principles of open source to other areas of technology and, indeed, beyond technology.

O'Reilly has laid the foundation for the next generation of open-source adoption and advocacy by articulating principles like his "architecture of participation," but it's now time for the open-source community to start looking beyond simple licensing matters to make the benefits of open source available to the widest swath of humanity.

In sum, we need to extrapolate from open-source software the principles that can drive a "deluge" of human benefit. This will only happen, however, if we stop fixating on the trees (licensing issues) to the exclusion of the forest. Licensing is a critical component of open source, but it's not The Principle that makes open source work.

Principles of community-building, transparency, sharing, etc. make open source work. Explaining and building upon these should be our focus.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

[lwalter71]

Hi Matt,

I agree. Open source software has become incredibly mainstream, and in that sense, has "won." That said, I still talk to people who have no idea that they're using open source software when they use Firefox, Google, or Linux, or so many enterprise software packages that include open source components. Maybe the "software" has won, but the "perception" is still catching up.

As you mention, the open source model can and is providing value in many other places already,and there is still huge untapped potential. For a meaningful project "adjacent" to open source software, people should check out www.openmrs.org . Technically an open source project, but there is so much more at stake than the development of good software. One could argue that youtube is an illustrative "open source" example (I'm sure some have) in the sense that it's a great example of how much can be created that no single media/content outlet could ever possibly create on its own. And certainly, as you've documented, people are "open source-ing" problems, concepts, ideas, etc. to get the lift of a community these days.

-Lance
Pentaho

[wanorris]

I can get all the source code for Google search engine? Where?

Can I get all the source for Gmail, Google Desktop, Google Toolbar, Google Calendar, Google News, and Google Reader too?

It's great that Google contributes code to the open source products that it builds proprietary code on top of, but it's a pretty big stretch to say that when you're using Google, you're using open source.

[Blue_Child]

Hi Matt,

I am very happy that you shared this broad vision of open source. Its collaborative spirit has a lot to offer to society as a whole, particularly during such a mutation period where collaboration is vital to our common life as people of the same planet.

I am French, I have worked for ZEND Technology as open source evangelist within French Government in particular, but I am also sociologist and psychologist.

I am launching an ambitious humanistic project: creating Blue Child Foundation, which is exactly in line with your vision. It is about spreading over open source collaborative human values to other fields of society.

Its main purpose is to propose people, companies and all type of organizations in the world to adopt "Blue Child Ideogram" as the banner of "human" along with 10 universal Life Commitments. The funds collected for the affiliation program will serve, half for the management of the foundation and its educational programs and half to support external development projects of various fields, based on humane values and alternative energies. Blue Child Ideogram poetically symbolizes The Child of Heaven and Earth living within each of us as human beings.

I am involving a few open source players (companies and non profit organizations) to become founding members of the Foundation, which is not yet formally created. In fact the project will start from the open source field which has already demonstrated most of Blue Child humane values. The first concrete project of the Foundation will be to launch together a new type of social network, federated around human values, purpose and service in order to structure collaboration of people for sustainable development projects.

Could we discuss about it ? You could be a wonderful ambassador of this project and ALFRESCO could become an active founding member of the Foundation.

My contact informations :
Laurent Bouffiès,
cell : [phone]
[e-mail]
Skype : laurent.bouffies (laptop)

[theopensourcerer]

Matt,

whilst in general I agree with the overall premise there is one thing I feel you have overlooked in your rush to ignore the "trees".

Without the GPL and it's ilk the FOSS that we know today would not exist. It took a really strong license to ensure that the principles were followed and not abused.

If Microsoft could have embraced, extended and extinguished it would have. It is largely because of the GPL that it failed.

So to move the methodologies and principles of FOSS to other spheres is a fine and noble objective. But without some "protection" I doubt it will succeed in any significant way.

Cheers

Alan (The Open Sourcerer)