Re: OSS Projects WAS: Call from Info World

Josh, may I use these ideas in a talk I am working on? Can I put your
name at the bottom of the slide as attribution?

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Josh Berkus wrote:
> Bruce,
>
> > Not like:
> >
> > * Not Linux - no single gatekeeper, project is usable without
> > enhancement * Not Mozilla - no company history like AOL/Netscape
> > * Not Open Office - no controlling company like Sun
> > * Not Gnome - no controlling companies
> > * Not PHP - no Zend steering development
> > * Not Sendmail - no control by Sendmail, Inc.
> > * Not MySQL - no MySQL AB that does all server development
>
> Some of these examples are redundant. Really, there's only 6 models for OSS
> projects:
>
> (please note that the projects cited are NOT based on in-depth research and
> may be wrongly classified)
> 1) Ours: a diffuse leadership structure with a variety of individuals and
> companies, but the only participants with clearly "louder voices" are
> individuals with seniority & responsibility. Examples: Us, LTSP, Samba,
> FreeBSD.
> 2) Heirarchical: large "volunteer" distributed network of contributors, but
> tightly controlled heirarchy at the top (usually a single "high priest").
> Model shared by Linux, Perl, Python, OpenBSD. Very common for projects that
> started as a single person's work.
> 3) Corporate-Council: projects which, due to their commercial value to several
> companies, are run by a group of company-appointed representatives, with
> independant developers largely excluded. Examples Gnome, XFree86.
> 4) Corporate-Sponsored: projects which either recently or historically have
> been financially sponsored by a single company, foundation, or university.
> As a result, leadership is hybrid of developer seniority and
> company/foundation influence. Examples: Apache, PHP, Slashcode
> 5) Corporate-owned: Open Source software which is really part of a single
> company's project line, and is often offered alongside proprietary offerings
> or accessories based on the same code. The company's paid development team
> and the project's leadership are identical. Examples: MySQL, OpenOffice.org,
> Eclipse, Sendmail, Sourceforge.
> 6) Single-developer: By far the numerical majority of OSS projects, these
> projects seldom have more than one or two serious developers and a few dozen
> users submitting bugs. Examples: Flexbackup, XCDRoast, and SQLite up until
> 6 months ago.
>
> --
> Josh Berkus
> Aglio Database Solutions
> San Francisco
>

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