On the Communities Surrounding Open Source

Brian says Apache does not have leads. Decisions are made by concensus. One nice thing is the graceful gradient of contribution: user -> expert user -> bug submission -> patches -> committer -> maintainer. This makes it easy to move up.

Mitch wonders about the right level of control. Too open and you get a babble; anarchy. Too closed and you turn contributions away. The Firefox leads think they have been too tight. For the last two years they have not admitted anyone to their group. A key is to decouple systems. This allows parallel development. The project lead should have good judgement more than anything else. What to leave out and what to leave alone.

Andew Morton manages the 2.6 kernel through 50 maintainers of each subsystem. Repository management becomes a key skill.

Open Standards and Open Source

Brian believes that they are two sides of the same coin. He points out that Apache was formed to implement a server for HTTP.

Linus thinks that some companies pay lip service to standards but deliberately seek to add proprietary features when implementing standards. These companies are not motivated to improve the standards. He thinks all open standards should demand an open source reference implementation. Standards are not always set by standards bodies. Open source projects can become defacto standards. These are accepted by the public as standards, because no one can take the implementation away, so it is always safe to build on.

On Software Patents

Linus has thought this has been on the open source radar for the past 5 years. It is bad for open source. It is just as bad for proprietary software. He despairs at the special interests in Europe who keep trying to get software patents in. A light at the end of the tunnel is the patent grants given by IBM, Sun and others. He thinks many other companies will follow suit, but not Microsoft.

Mitch Kapor wrote a paper in 1990 entitled "Why patents are bad for software". He goes way back. The big problem is that tens of thousands of bad patents have been issued. 15 years ago the Patent Office changed policy. Until then they checked for prior art and the other rules. Then they decided to grant anything and let it be fought out in the courts. This could create a future Patenet Bhopal, with toxic stockpiles of patents waiting to explode. He thinks that Microsoft's last stand will be to use their toxic stockpile as a Patent WMD, a weapon of mass destruction. He says we need patent reform. Which will happen first? He does not know.

5 Years From Now

Linus does not predict the future. He says those who look into the distance at Utopia stumble on the rock in front of them. He looks at the rocks. He wants to fix things today, and then fix things tomorrow and so on. He says he is an anti-visionary.
He has no visions.

Andrew sees open source as inevitable.

Mitch sees irreistable force in open source meeting immovable objects. He thinks interesting things will  happen. He cites Wikipedia as an example of what can happen with decentralised self assembling systems. An invaluable resource created far more cheaply than their closed source counterparts.

Brian sees open source as an emergent property of the Internet itself. The software lives in an ecosystem where many parallel experiments with different forms take place concurrently.  This causes super-fast evolution and survival of the fittest. He likens closed source to the failed centrally planned economies of the communist countries. The market won. Microsoft has criticised the lack of a central authority to take responsibility. Brian asks "Does Microsoft see out lack of a single point of failure as a problem?"

The Nature and Culture of Open Source Developers

Linus thinks that cooperation is not motivational. Its more fun to compete. Lets not cooperate too much. Bad coders do not get their contributions accepted. Good programmers do. Good programmers are almost never politicians. It is insufficient to want a career path to do open source. You need another motivation. You do it because you would do it anyway.

Andrew thinks that politics is dealt with by developers getting subverted. They end up more loyal to the open source project than to their companies.

Mitch notes that most open source developers are in the US and Europe. (He seemed to miss the fact that Andrew Morton, an Australian was sitting next to  him and that per capita, Australia contributes the most to  open source.) Developers from other countries use open source but do not contribute as much. Maybe language? Maybe culture? Brian avoids developers who want to make a pot of gold. He thinks developers over 30 are likely to recognise that they need enough for a home and to care for their children. From their it is about feeling good about what you do, about contributing, seeing your code live and not be yanked out a week before release by a "deranged Venture Capitalist".

Brian thinks open source developers have to be good communicators to succeed. They need to be able to debate and defend themeselves. They also need good judgement. An open source programmer will usually be a good hire.

Personal Observations on the Panel

The panel was an amazing assembly of open source talent. Looking at them I came up with some descriptions:

Linus Torvalds - Glowing with goodness, happiness and calmness. He projects it like the Dalai Lama.
Andew Morton - The dour realist. Linus' right hand man as he calls him.
Mitch Kapor - The wise old owl. He is really from another time, which gives him perspective on the current time. Though look out for Chandler, a PIM. He is cooking up a killer app. Also check out the new calendaring standard CalDav.
Brian Behlendorf - He reminds me of a friend of mine. He seems to be the archetypical Californian (not sure if he is), from pony tail  to Zen views. The biological perspective he has is very appealing.