R.I.P., open-source evangelism
We have reached a critical inflection point for open source.
With everyone from Qualcomm to UBS to Microsoft embracing open source in one shape or another, the question is no longer "why" to use open source, but rather "how."
Because of this changing mindset around open-source adoption, we no longer need evangelists encouraging open-source adoption. Adoption is a given. It's the default.
No, what we need now are those that can illustrate how to derive the most benefit from the inevitable adoption of open source.
This is perhaps evident in MindTouch's just-released survey of the most influential people in open source today, as voted by over 50 top-level open-source business executives. People like Larry Augustin, Marten Mickos, Dries Buytaert, Mark Radcliffe, and Andrew Aitken make the list. (Note: I am honored to be on the list as well.) They are there not because they're open-source cheerleaders, but because they have helped vendors and customers alike understand how to get the most from open-source investments.
The trend away from evangelism is also apparent in the types of industry events that still draw an audience. The Linux Foundation's inaugural LinuxCon amassed over 700 attendees, in large part because it promised (and delivered) tutorial-like education on how to get the most from Linux deployments.
In a similar manner, O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), Open Source Business Conference (Disclosure: I'm program chair for OSBC), ApacheCon, EclipseCon, Red Hat Summit, and other such events remain popular because they give attendees real-world insight into how to get the most from open source.
The message used to be, "Open source is powerful! You should try it." The market got the message, to the point that open source is a de facto component of virtually every technology vendor's strategy and is reaching ubiquity in enterprise deployments, too.
It's time for the next phase of open source, the practical phase where we focus on how to deploy open source, not why.
This is what I (unsuccessfully) tried to say in my "Free Software Is Dead. Long Live Open Source!" post. I certainly wasn't saying that GPL-licensed free software is dead, or should die. Rather, I was (and am) arguing that pragmatism is the new order of the day: how real companies and developers derive real benefits from real software.
No ideology. Just adoption.
That's the message that resonates today and, frankly, always has been the right message for open source. It's what is driving widespread open-source adoption and will continue to do so, provided we can effectively help would-be adopters understand "how" now that they've bought into "why."
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
How's that working for them?
Who is stupid enough to click ads, other than you?
So are you shutting down the blog then? ;-)
You have shown time and time again you do not understand software or open source.
What open source is? simply stated? is a beautiful and effective way to scale creative thinking and culture. What is amazing is the rapid acceptance of "open source" beyond software development. Today businesses are looking at open source as a way to create new business models, new management strategies, new marketing, innovation and community-building paradigms.
Evangelists in this broader understanding of open source include many of the world's most influential business thinkers including Gary Hamel, Roger Martin and Tom Peters. They have discovered the competitive power of such creative collaborative, design thinking cultures and are advising today's business leaders to rapidly adopt these new kinds of models across their organizations; internally and externally.
But acceptance will be slow among executives who are just now being introduced to open source creative models. Hamel says they are locked into "archaic beliefs" that must be changed if they are to remain competitive. It took nearly 15 years for the technology acceptance; how long will this take?
Where innovation is now a strategic necessity, open source creative cultures are a powerful, but frightening alternative to the habitual thinking and analytical-driven cultures. As Martin's book The Responsibility Virus makes clear, fear is a powerful force that shuts down innovation. Most executives and senior managers have no clue how strongly fear influences their thinking and actions.
Open source and design thinking are anecdotes. But there are countless traditional players? individuals and corporations; large and powerful? who have no interest in seeing new competitive threats arise from such innovative cultures. Open source is revolutionary change; landowners seldom start revolutions. These players will not welcome the change open source promises. And they will not play nicely.
Such opposition will look for evidence that open source doesn't work. To borrow Roger Martin's language, "reliable" actions will trump more "viable" solutions.
In that context the evangelist will play a secondary role to the practitioner. If Malcolm Gladwell is right, it takes 10,000 hours for an individual to grasp the nuance and expertise necessary to play that role. That's a small community of practitioners. That's the next challenge for open source.
I don't believe the evangelism stops, however (when has it ever in the history of humankind?). My sense is that the next phase in evangelism will be on open-source's efficacy in the enterprise. Certainly organizations from Symantec to the New York Times to whitehouse.gov have added to the legitimacy of open-source Web content management systems in the marketplace for specific brand sites. However, open-source has a long way to go in the areas of CRM, DAM, document and records management, financials, ERP, workflow management, or even just end-to-end business application development in the enterprise.
I'm not suggesting that we haven't turned a corner. Its just that we have much further to go before enterprises will adopt open-source across its application stack. Some of that is due to change management, some is the inherent cultural difficulties within the open-source community that can often view mainstream as "the Man".
Also, assignation of value in the OS community is often based on the heroics of the contributor, which may leave other noncoding contributors in the value chain outside of the loop. Once business, project management, developer, and integrator talents begin to work with maximum efficiency in a broader open-source definition of community, things will really take off in the enterprise. Until then, many businesses will still feel that the risks of adoption in areas outside of CMS may be too great.
We'll get there!
- by Stupidshitter November 1, 2009 3:41 PM PST
- Matt,
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(12 Comments)This is near drivel. Virtually all of the people on the survey have "bought" their way into the Open source community, and I've never even heard of most of them, much less respect their ideas. They may be influential in their own right, having bought their way into Open Source, but they are not leaders.
I had serious doubts about the survey to begin with, when I noticed it was from MindTouch. Talked with them at OSCON, and they were mindless salesmen. As you seem to be.
Hope this gave your ego a boost, because otherwise it's garbage.