Adopting the Open Source Culture
Embracing Change
I am absolutely excited about open source software projects and the culture it nurtures. Not only is it exciting from the aspect of knowledge sharing and the free exchange of ideas but, mostly what fascinates me is the way in which people are starting to embrace the change and are adopting on open source mindset within their work environment.
Daytime Jobs and Full-time Committers
It has been an interesting period, watching open source project committers, (think about Eclipse, Linux, and Apache) people with daytime jobs and bills to pay volunteering and using their free, leisure hours contributing to a pet project on a regular basis. Just check the mail list traffic or, replies in forums that were created very, very late at night, or even way past midnight. What is especially striking is that sometimes my questions in the open-source project mail lists were responded to much faster and in a much more thorough fashion than for example, when using a ticketing system of some large software vendors where we actually had a paid account! 
SOPERA: We, the Open Source SOA Company
As an open source company we are also adopting open source practices. In the last year we opened a forum, we have a download page that does not compel you to put up with a tedious registration process. Our Eclipse activities, as well a number of open source projects on Sourceforge and Google Code are purely open source projects. All these activities are dedicated towards enabling open communication with our users, to empower them with more than adequate, know-how and it is also aimed at getting the necessary feedback from our community.
Culture Shock
As you might well have guessed we are not quite where we want to be, yet. Right now we are working on a public bug tracking project, a public source code repository, and in the future may be even a public wiki. By doing this, we are also changing our internal corporate culture. It is very interesting to observe these changes because honestly, it is really hard to switch from “closed” to “open”.
Don’t Miss the Bus
Think about Wikipedia versus, the Encylopedia Brittanica. Both are online, both are free (the latter, is almost free), but one is booming and the other is fading away. Wikipedia has an open editing model where literally everyone on the web is able to read, modify, and create new articles. Skeptics will definitely say “oh, these evil internet users, just give them the rights and they will destroy everything….” or something like “dumb teenagers can’t write…”, and you may have hit on something true but only partially.
The Wikipedia (and many other wiki-like websites) example shows that the “open” model works, and can be very successful. Note that the open editing model is backed-up by very simple, technical features. For example, in the wiki editing model all modifications are reversible, nothing gets lost nor can it be irrevocably deleted. There will be always a previous version available. As a groupware system the wiki is very well organized to increase awareness about changes, for example, E-mail notifications is a standard feature in almost all wikis. So what we’re saying is; hop on, don’t miss the bus.
Shedding the Closed Source Project Mindset
Moving from the “all-closed” to an open source model is really hard work. Discussions about: “Who can access this data?” or, “What roles shall we have in our bug tracking?”, “Shall we forbid commits during the end game?” will remain and they definitely should be discussed. However, what is really important is where are you coming from? What is your take on this? What is your initial assumption? It can either be “open” up or “close” the doors. Do you see your community, contributors, users,and employees by default as smart, cooperative and committed or dumb, destructive and lazy?
There will be always be mistakes, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. And if you are really, really, successful in your open communication and your community grows, you might have to endure a novel luxury problem - malicious members. However as with the wiki model there are simple technical means to deal with it, think about source control, backups, monitoring, reviewing, and the list goes on.
Are you ready?
I recently read a good article written by Chirs Grams - three signs your corporate culture isn’t ready for the open source way. This article does not tell you how to fix it and this, in my opinion, can only be done iteratively with continuous improvements based on the feedback from our customers and our community.
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