Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : Bryan Kirschner, Industry Conferences

Berkman Lunch: Open Source at Microsoft - Opportunity or Threat?

Bryan Kirschner — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:47:00 GMT

I was recently at Harvard for two events. The first, which I'll talk about in this blog, was part of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard lunch series.

Mario Madden and I were invited to speak at a session called "Microsoft and Open Source: Opportunity or Threat?" You can watch the whole thing online at the link - and David Weinberger liveblogged as well.

The focus of the whole thing was, to quote Karim Lakhani, our host, a "vigorous discussion." So we had about 15 minutes to give an up-front presentation about our thoughts on the "opportunity or threat" issue.

The rest of the time was open discussion. So I do recommend checking out the webcast-it's tough to do the discussion justice second hand. I will call out a couple things that won't show up in the recording.

First, Harvard really is an important source of expertise on open source. There's a whole bunch of research that's certainly been valuable to me (on developer and corporate motivations, for example). There are also people like Margo Seltzer (the former CTO of Sleepycat) who I got to meet at the second event, which I'll talk about in my next blog.

Second, the whole OSS Lab at Microsoft community has emphasized the importance of dialogue for as long as we've been around. This event drove that home once again. Some folks followed up verbally or in mail to semi-apologize for it being a bit of a challenging environment for us.

But I didn't think it was challenging: if a question is difficult to answer because someone is working hard at making it difficult for me to answer, I'm not too keen on that. But if a question is difficult to answer because the answer is something we haven't thought about (and maybe should) or it's just a tough problem...if the questioner is willing to help me be smarter about figuring out a good answer, well, bring it on, as they say.

David Weinberger actually raised a point like this when we talked about Microsoft-released projects and contributions(from his blog):

Q: [David] Are 500 contributions a lot? Compared to the number of patents? Products?
A: [Bryan] We'll measure success when every product group considers open source.
Q: [Karim] IBM says they have 1,000 developers working on Linux, etc. Do you have any number you can point to that's similar?
A: No.

I added we don't have a KLOC or person hours target...should we?

Third, just for the record, here, I said think open source and Microsoft represents a mutual opportunity (...check out the podcast for all the reasons why.) But that brings me to the one thing that most sticks in my mind. A CS professor who attended told us she waited until the recording was finished because she didn't want to be rude-but that to her, we were talking about our open source strategy as if it was something new and innovative.

But from her perspective, she said she's been doing software development a long time, and this sounds just like what Microsoft did in the late 1980's, when being open to developers is what made early Microsoft products interesting to her as a developer. So (to paraphrase): not to be rude, but why do you think this is cool?

This was funny because (as I replied) I absolutely agree with her. Our open source strategy took a lot of learning about how open source has changed the landscape, and what it has brought that's new and different, but the fundamental principle remains the same: openness to third-party developers is a powerful and enduring principle.

And it is part of Microsoft's DNA, as we sometimes say ("...the engineering relationship is getting back to the way it used to be in 1994-1997, which is a great relief to us," [Jeremy] Allison, said recently about Samba and Microsoft).

At one time, Microsoft was perceived to be a leader in openness through free SDKs and extensive APIs, active developer communities, published object models (wow, now you can call the Excel object model from the Powershell scripting language...) , and more.

For a number of (in my opinion) remediable reasons, from the time open source started to capture the popular imagination till today, Microsoft has not been perceived as a leader. But I don't see any reason why we can't reach the point where the best things Microsoft has brought to users and developers and the best things open source has brought to users and developers will be decidedly better together. I think there are some arguable examples already (XNA is high on my list: traditional coding contests plus easy paths to write and sell games, plus a growing open source community).

The other event at Harvard was a business focused Open Source CEO Summit...which I'll talk about in my next blog.

Open Government Collaboratives

Bryan Kirschner — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:33:00 GMT

The city of Matsue, Japan is using Ruby to promote regional economic development. One of the unexpected highlights of the recent GOSCON, was a gentleman from Matsue coming up to me after I had given my talk about open source and Microsoft and saying "I am using IronRuby. I love it."

It was a nice moment because - even in the best of times - public sector IT typically has resource constraints that make it tough for them to think aspirationally about technology. And right now isn't the best of times.

But if you step out of the current challenges for a moment, it was a reminder that whether you're a developer at Microsoft or at the Census Bureau, you have the potential to contribute to something people would love. (Why do people at the north end of my zip code take 5 minutes longer to get work? On a percentage of the mean basis, that's huge. Does the disruption of the grid by the lake have that much of an impact? Yes, I am a long-time GIS nerd. Ironically, there is a nerd GIS - although, sadly, it is an acronym and not a density plot of nerds per square mile...).

On a more practical level, "open government collaboratives" was a theme of the conference. This is a consortium-based approach to development -f or example, multiple cities cooperating to develop a web toolkit for libraries. (Brian Prentice and Andrea Di Maio at Gartner call this "community source.") The good news is that both open source and Microsoft can play useful - and complementary - roles in this.

Open source has demonstrated a set of practices, and open source communities have developed a pool of technologies - Plone, for example, was a popular CMS that government collaboratives customized.

I wound up speaking to a couple folks about things like enabling single-sign on with Active Directory into their Plone-based systems. This is exactly what Sam Ramji describes (in graphic detail) as our open source strategy: as the application ecosystem (including open source applications) on Windows grows, products like Active Directory become more relevant. (In the case of Active Directory, and System Center, those applications don't need to be on Windows.)

I started my talk with two simple declarative statements: open source is neither a fad, nor a magic bullet. Microsoft products are neither a fad, nor a magic bullet (mildly interesting diff for a slow day: live google).

More importantly, over and over again, this was the right starting point for a face-to-face conversation with the IT managers attending GOSCON. For most, this is where they are as well - considering all the tools in the toolbox, trying to determine the "best tool for the job." That can be challenging, but it's a bilateral, constructive challenge we can work together on-to find a solution set that developers and users will love.

GOSCON 2008

Bryan Kirschner — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:35:00 GMT

Last year, we sponsored GOSON 2007, the Government Open Source Conference, and we're sponsoring it again this year. I will also be presenting a keynote address on how Microsoft participates in a world of choice.

I'm personally also excited that Brian Behlendorf (one of the co-founders of Apache) will be on a panel-and, like Sam, I have profound respect for The Apache Way.

What's also gratifying is the fact that two other colleagues from Microsoft will also be participating. Stuart McKee, the National Technology Office for the U.S., will be on the Government Open Collaboratives Panel with Brian, and Kathleen Connor from Microsoft's Health Solutions Group, will be speaking.

As I've said many times before in my blog posts, success for our team is not about controlling all things open source at Microsoft. Rather, it's about encouraging, enabling, and advising (if they need it) others across Microsoft on how to constructively engage with open source (like this...I need this. You need this. I'm not sure why, but I am confident we all do. This started as the work of one super creative guy, and kudos for the team for releasing it under the MS-PL).

I love this intro to Paul Taylor's GOSCON keynote, where he says governments have a "second chance" at realizing the "promise of e-government"-and that "some of what comes next will be home grown, some will be off the shelf, some will be community built and some will come from where we least expect it."

The least expected is what we're all about.

Participating Actively

Bryan Kirschner — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:39:00 GMT

Now that we’ve had our first “participate” event in conjunction with OSCON here in Portland, I wanted to share a few thoughts. This was a great experience and a great event—or, really, two consecutive events, the morning case study discussion and the afternoon panel.

First I’ll talk about the case study and then build on comments from some folks who’ve “beaten me to the blog.” In the morning Karim Lakhani from Harvard led the group through a case study about a fast-growing company (Threadless t-shirts) built on community contribution and distributed innovation. This was basically like being in a Harvard Business School class with a bunch of super achievers, complete with questions and counter questions (John Wilbanks from Science Commons blogs about it here). Stepping back and taking a look at a whole bunch of concepts and practices that underlie open source in the software domain in another context (t-shirt design), IMO, really opened the floodgates on discussion—a discussion Karim (with regret) had to close as the buzz in the room kept right on going well over time and into lunch…

In the afternoon I was part of a panel discussion and Q and A that started back in the software domain specifically. The one thing I would definitely do differently is to couple the morning case study and the later panel discussion more tightly. Not everyone who could be part of one was part of the other this year, and the real “ah ha’s” for me came from being a part of both. Here’s what I took away overall.

I introduced the morning session by noting that we’re at the ten-year mark since the folks who founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI) rallied around the term “open source.” At last year’s OSCON, Bill Hilf announced we had launched http://Microsoft.com/opensource , our first public, official, company-wide statement of policy and strategy on OSS. So (I said): “If you look at that span of time from 1998 to 2007, no one can accuse us of being precipitous, and no one can flatter us for being first adopters.”
But there’s a benefit to being slow: other people don’t stand still stuff. That includes folks like Karim and another professor on our panel, Siobhan O’Mahony, doing research. I can’t emphasize enough the contributions their work and that of many others of their peers made to our first step in informing and building acceptance of that step into participation in 2007. We read it all.

And this is where I’ll offer a different perspective than Zack—in his blog he said he felt the afternoon session (on which I really appreciated his participation and contributions) he felt a bit like “it was outside looking in” on open source and “academic.” With regard to the first point, one of my goals for next year is definitely to figure out how we integrate the “inside look out” (at another domain) like we did in the morning. With regard to the latter, here’s the interesting thing to me: “academic” can be pejorative when it means “divorced from any substantive decision-making”—that is, you’re just studying for the sake of studying. And I can where Zack is coming from: MySQL is one of the oldest OSS-based businesses. Zack was quite clear he knows how they manage their dev process and a bunch of other things. Unlike the folks at Threadless and perhaps many younger OSS-based companies, Zack and MySQL’s leadership team don’t even have to wonder about what to do if they are offered a big contract or billion-dollar buy out from a big established vendor…they’ve been there, done that. I respect that.

But if like Zack (and Matt Asay, who couldn’t be at partcipate08…Matt, I’ve read your blogs for years, you’re a thoughtful guy, I would bet money you couldn’t help but love the morning session…save a date for 09!) you are encouraging Microsoft to make more code (or whole products) open source: on the Microsoft side “academic” insights are highly relevant and actionable. Siobhan almost literally wrote the book on how established companies work with foundations and communities. Karim’s understanding of distributed innovation spans from the early days of OSS’ popularity through Wikipedia and beyond (we learned on Monday that there is a vibrant online user innovation community around custom granola recipes…).

Their research and practitioners like Allison (and others) abstracting out how what-worked-in-her-experience might apply to another technology or audience are directly relevant to diverse Microsoft teams figuring out how to “go open” in ways that are sustainable because they engage a community and make business sense—there are some great examples (here and here and here). But if there’s one qualification for being the first person in the history of the universe with the title of “Director of Open Source Strategy at Microsoft” (…thanks Bill and Sam…) it is this: the humility to understand it would be foolish to try to figure out how to expand this list company-wide on our own, without learning from everyone who has gone before.

So here is the real a-ha for me: John Wilbanks’ job is a lot harder than mine. He is approaching the Science Commons domain with a far less robust body of knowledge and shared understanding across communities than we have in OSS. Some of that may be ten years of “open source” versus a shorter timeframe for applying these concepts to science—but what I tried to articulate at the end of the panel was this: I believe “open source” has achieved a fascinating and valuable thing. It has achieved a balance as an construct which is not just a reductive, narrow focus on source code licensing (which is a component) nor a vague, fuzzy, wishy-washy platitude or marketing slogan (which is a risk and something I know the OSI worries about). It has enough cohesion, flexibility, and surface tension to be something you can study scientifically and discuss with a shared understanding of how it relates to software or t-shirts or science, and have an intuitive “know-good-practices-when-you-see-them” dimension.

I think the OSI and other leaders in open source contributed to this by striving to maintain fidelity to a core set of values while being flexible rather than doctrinaire. And here at OSCON this strikes me: last year at OSCON 2007 Bill Hilf also announced we were submitting two Microsoft Shared Source licenses to the OSI for approval. This was a milestone I see as not just instrumentally useful to provide clarity to users of these licenses; I see it as fitting as a matter of respect and recognition. And this year we took another step forward with participate08 here at Tim O’Reilly and Allison Randal’s OSCON 2008. I see this as fitting not just instrumentally as a matter of convenience (--lots of the right people happen to be here--) but as a matter of respect and recognition. I hope to be back for participate09.

I am going to close this blog entry on that thought but for one picture that really is worth a thousand words. Once we get the notes and the whiteboard photos assembled I’ll share more about the discussion, but this image will stick with me a theme for why so many folks did come to think hard and contribute as a part of participate08—and why I am grateful they did:

(photo by James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media)

Participate08

Bryan Kirschner — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:09:00 GMT

On July 21 I will have the honor and pleasure of being the sponsor, host, and an active participant in participate08. participate08 is a one-day summit held in coordination with the O'Reilly Open Source Conference(OSCON). It is designed to facilitate dialogue about open source and other collaborative communities and help explore opportunities for greater participation in the design, development, and deployment of software in the modern IT environment.

The reasons I think it is cool are mostly personal as well as professional. The work of Harvard’s Karim Lakhani (our facilitator in the morning and moderator in the afternoon) has been one of the biggest influences on my perspective on free and open source software (...that’s kind of a pun…). I haven’t been familiar with panelist Siobhan O’Mahony’s work quite as long, but she is one of, if not “the” leading researcher on how firms work with open source communities. Her work quite literally helps me figure out how to do my job. Panelist John Wilbanks runs the Science Commons project at Creative Commons, an endeavor I think has a good solid foundation in elements of brilliance. Speaking of which, Zack Urlocker is a super smart guy. And Allison Randal has her own standing tagline with me as “one of the most thoughtful people in FOSS.”

Sometimes we have to focus on what I’ll call day-to-day issues: like what if a Microsoft team releases an application under an open source license (the Ms-PL) without making the source code available? (The answer is: the team, whose disconnect with our policy was 100% accidental and unintended—stepped up to strongly affirm their commitment to OSS best practices and voluntarily released it with source code, to their great credit.) These are important. Most of the time (as in this case) things turn out positively. But participate08 is focused on the big picture, or macro level issues—the future of distributed innovation in software and beyond; being a part of that sort of discussion with folks like our panelists is just mind-blowingly cool.

In the morning, we’ll be holding a small group, facilitated “executive session”—in the afternoon, the panel will star in an open session where we hope to have a great dialogue among the panel—and with the audience. If you will be at OSCON I hope you’ll join us in E145 at 1:30 PM!

OSCON and Everything After

Bryan Kirschner — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 03:09:00 GMT

When I describe my job as “helping Microsoft and open source to grow together,” I get a broad range of reactions from people outside and inside of Microsoft. These reactions have included sentiments along the lines of “that must be tough,” or “you must be a glutton for punishment” on occasion.

After wrapping up a fairly momentous year* culminating in OSCON (see this and this), I thought the time was right to put some big-picture context around how I feel about my job.

The year 1995 was when we saw the first official public release (0.6.2) of the Apache server, and MySQL AB was founded.

The world was two years shy of the Debian Software Guidelines and three years away from the articulation of the Open Source Definition (OSD) they inspired.

The Open Source Technology Group (OSTG)—by virtue of operating both Sourceforge and Freshmeat today’s largest hoster of public open source project--was about to be founded.

We were at the very beginning of the growth of open source into a significant, enduring part of the IT environment.

So what’s this graph below showing over the course of (roughly) 1995 through 2007?

It’s showing Microsoft’s reported fiscal year revenue, which grew to $51.122B USD in 2007 from $6.075B in 1995 (you can reproduce it with data from here.)

During most of this time, we didn’t have Codeplex.
We didn’t have licenses submitted to the OSI.
We didn’t have Port 25.
We didn’t have Bill Hilf, or Sam Ramji, or the rest of the OSS lab.
And we didn’t have http://microsoft.com/opensource.

And Microsoft and open source did grow, together—coincidentally. In retrospect, this is not surprising. Microsoft technologies supported an ecosystem of passionate developers and an entrepreneurial individuals and companies and tens of millions of end-user programmers and end-users providing peer-to-peer assistance sharing knowledge—and code—with each other.

And we had many people at Microsoft working on (to highlight some of my current favorites) the research and development and product management path to technologies like Silverlight and XNA and Photosynth.

Now we have all those things—plus the opportunity to think every day about the “growing together” that has happened coincidentally from (say) 1995 until July 2007—and how we might work together with others to make it that much more (--food for thought: MySQL’s Community VP Kaj Arno blogged about the WAMP stack just after OSCON here).

There are reasons why my job can be challenging sometimes—but the slightest concern that Microsoft and open source don’t have opportunities to “grow together” by design faster and farther than they have (largely)** “by accident” over the last 10 plus years isn’t among them.

The “official” t-shirt of the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft says “Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft: Reports of Snowballs Seen in Hell.” This year was another step forward to replacing that slogan with “Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft: Of Course.” Then I’ll get the answer I give back to people when I describe my job: not tough. Cool.

*I have internalized a July-to-June fiscal year calendar. I attribute this to the fact that my wife works in education, so summer forms an annual breakpoint for her, as well as to the fact I worked in Finance during a point in my life when I think I mistook a love of math for an affinity for pain.

**There’s more than enough material for, and reason to do, a separate post about some of the individual “pioneers” at Microsoft, without whom we would not have the resources we have in place today here at Microsoft.

OSBC and What It’s All About

Bryan Kirschner — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:28:00 GMT

OSBC made me think. There were some simple highlights (like introducing myself and being recognzied as “a Port 25 blogger”…my 1.5 minutes of fame). And certainly a lowlight was the concern many people expressed around whether Microsoft’s open source strategy has changed (no, it hasn’t, another reason why going to OSBC and having those conversations is important).

But what really started me thinking was the experience of being at the Microsoft Open Source ISV Forum held the day before. Simply and accurately described as an event specifically tailored to open source companies on “How to be profitable on the Microsoft platform,” it was attended by—I don’t have the exact count handy—folks from give or take 50 companies. They represented an incredibly diverse set of approaches to building a business (and cultivating a community) around open source. Fast forward later during OSBC to a long presentation Eben Moglen gave called “Copyleft Business Models: Why it’s Good Not to Be Your Competitor’s Free Lunch.”

These two things drew a broad connection: many different parties, each, in their own ways, “trying to balance being a good community citizen with getting paid” (appropriately enough, a quote from OSBC’s founder Matt Asay)—whether your pay is a financial transaction or non-financial contribution.

The companies who came to the Forum literally did get a free lunch—but there’s a more important point. Microsoft’s business strategy, overall, not specific to open source, is to be generative: with 750,000 partners (including ISVs, OEMs, systems integrators and consultants and so on), 96% of Microsoft’s revenue is indirect (meaning somebody among those 750,000 partners gets paid before Microsoft does).

Harvard’s Jonathan Zittrain described the concept I am borrowing-- Zittrain describes “generative” this way (emphasis added):

The much-touted differences between free and proprietary PC Oss may not capture what is most important to the Internet’s future. Proprietary systems can remain “open,” as many do, by permitting unaffiliated third parties to write superseding programs and permitting PC owners to install these programs without requiring any gatekeeping by the OS provider. In this sense, debates about the future of our PC experience should focus less on such common battles as Linux versus Microsoft Windows, as both are “open” under this definition, and more on generative versus nongenerative: understanding which platforms will remain open to third-party innovation and which will not.

Sometimes this means what you can see (free as in open code - simple example WIX), sometimes what you can do (free as in beer SDKs). But this commitment (or, you could even say, dependency on) generativity means there is a risk of serving a competitor more than a literal free lunch: partner programs like the one offered at the Forum are set up so any ISV who meets the requirements can get business and technical assistance from Microsoft. Whether or not your business is built around software that competes with Microsoft products isn’t a criterion: from Oracle to SugarCRM ISVs that partner with Microsoft to build applications on Windows also compete with other Microsoft products. Nor is what type of development, business model, or licensing approach you have chosen. You really can’t have the benefits of being “generative” without accepting these conditions. Conversely, you obviously can be generative while competing to some degree with those same partners, whether with SQL Server or Dynamics.

This is really a point I wish I could go back to every person from an open-source based company I talked to about “Microsoft’s open source strategy” and re-reemphasize. From an ISV or partner you’re an “equal citizen” as a potential partner. That commitment (or dependency on) generativity is one that predates the popularity of open source in the broad market and remains a core component of Microsoft’s business success.

That’s “business as usual” as well.

(I would be remiss if I did not mention the Forum without thanking our speakers: Stephen O’Grady from Redmonk; Andrew Aitken from Olliance; John Roberts from Sugar CRM; and Marc Lind from Aras. In addition, the awesome VC Panel members were informative & thought provoking : Larry Augustin, Peter Sonsini, Philippe Cases, Nicolas Kardas, Kim Polese. Thanks all for a great day.)

The Beautiful Game

Bryan Kirschner — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:49:00 GMT

At the MySQL Conference and Expo 2007, technical experts from Microsoft and MySQL are here demonstrating a number of technology projects that give customers more choice when deploying MySQL on Windows. In fact, MySQL and Microsoft work together on a number of applications, including ADO.NET provider Interop, and a Visual Studio plug-in that enables developers to access MySQL data directly from VS.

If this is a surprise, a good way to understand why we’re working together in this way is to look at the most popular sport in the world—football (what the U.S. calls soccer). Football is often referred to as “the beautiful game.” Despite the fact that every team wants to compete and win, and many teams have fierce, ongoing rivalries, all teams share common ground in the value of playing a “beautiful game.” If football maintains its unique appeal compared to other sports, it will continue to attract more fans, generating more opportunity for an ecosystem of business partners and investor, and thus more opportunity for current and aspiring players. By virtue of being part of this broad ecosystem, each individual player on each team steps onto the pitch with a part to play in the future of global sport

Customers as Common Ground...
As commercial software companies, MySQL and Microsoft share substantial common ground. Marten Mickos, MySQL’s CEO once told The Economist that their centralized staff of developers enables them to maintain governance of the code and “go to the commercial users of the product and guarantee the product.” Explaining, “You could say that this is what they pay for.”

I would take this a step further: it is not only about developers and code. What commercial software companies offer extends to all the people at both companies who come to work every day cognizant of their role in a broad global ecosystem, and accepting that their job is that much harder (and potentially more rewarding) because of the challenge of playing a “beautiful game.” I and my counterparts, Gerardo and Reggie, and our respective colleagues come to work thinking both about supporting our company’s centralized development processes and enabling participation from a broad community of volunteers and business partners. Or the relationship between our investors and shareholders and our employees and business partners. Or the relationship between our customers and our competitors who may share those same customers.

Everyone shares a desire for “their team” to succeed—but this type of intelligence and competition is a long way from myopic, zero-sum conflict. And it fosters a diverse and sometimes unpredictable world of opportunities.

Comingling, as Far as the Eye Can See
Particularly in light of a history (of often overly simplified) rhetoric in the market about “proprietary versus open source” business models, I would guess many people would not have predicted they would see a demonstration of MySQL and Microsoft interoperability before they walked into the conference hall. In fact as I walk around the conference hall, I am reminded of the an excellent book—Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software—in which MIT Professor Michael Cusumano closes the Foreword with this statement:

The conclusion I reach from reading this book is that the software world is diverse as well as fascinating in its contrasts. Most likely, software users will continue to see a comingling of free, open source, and proprietary software products for as far as the eye can see.

I confess I am not sure what I’ll see here next year—but I confident that with [Gerardo and Marten Mickos and Bill Hilf and] we will continue to compete in a “beautiful game”—and I anticipate we will continue to favorably surprise everyone who walks in the door.

Reference:
Mickos http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5624944
Foreword: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262062461forw1.pdf )

Ants and Software Development: Thoughts from the ASA Conference

MichaelF — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 20:12:00 GMT

I’ve been surrounded by people who want to study us like bugs—and they intend that as a compliment.

I just got back from the attending sessions of Communication and Information Technology Section of the American Sociological Association (CITASA) at the ASA conference in Montreal. This group of researchers studies:

The social aspects of computing, the Internet, new media, computer networks, and other communication and information technologies. This includes online communities, knowledge management, the digital divide, labor markets, workplaces, and how the Internet fits into everyday life [and] the design and use of technology [including] developing and analyzing new kinds of software, and thinking about the implementation of technologies for teaching, research, and the real world.

Myself and Prof. James Witte (Clemson), Chair of CITASA

The thought of bugs struck me when I sat down to recap my experience because, I thought—as a systems-minded person myself—an individual bug is not that interesting. But put a lot of bugs together, and the humble ant, bee, or termite, can, by acting in concert, create spectacular feats of engineering. Sound like building software? –That’s interesting.

What’s particularly important is that these practitioners focus on the criticality of social dynamics to any endeavor—the relevance to distributed, voluntary open source development is obvious, but these dynamics are important to closed-source development, diffusion and use of technology, information dissemination, bridging the “digital divide”…

I know I won’t do justice to everything here and now: suffice to say there are folks working on things like how building your reputation on Slashdot works (got your attention?); how to predict the level of documentation that will be produced by developers given different levels of social reinforcement for contributing code versus good documentation (…a challenge as applicable to proprietary as open source development, in my experience); and how different newsgroup communities use data to measure and control their “community health” (one group dedicated to quilting (yes, like with needles and fabric) seem to be particularly aggressive about this, going to show that traditional geek stereotypes may be becoming victims of the ubiquity of the Internet.) I’ll just promise that we will work hard on bringing some of the most interesting and relevant information, and interviewees, to Port25 over the next year.

Before I go nurse my jet lag, two quick notes:

First, since it is always nice to agree with the Boss (--which holds true for both Bill Hilf and Bruce Springsteen, IMHO), I will pile on Bill’s blog post about closed (or open) mindedness. If you happened to click through to CITASA’s website, you might have noticed something: our lab is a sponsor, Microsoft Research (MSR) is a participant (and a long-time participant and creator of some of the leading software for conducting social network analysis, I might add)—and the site is hosted by the Clemson Linux User Group. Bernie Hogan, one of the sociologists at the conference, said it best when the group turned to discussing “moral panic” (their words) or what one might also call hysteria (my word) about MySpace and “Internet Child Predators” right now: researchers have a critical role to play in “explaining what’s really happening.” I take as a point of pride that we share across our Port25 team, CITASA, MSR, and (I hope) you the reader a commitment to understand what’s really true—empirically measured, tested, challenged, tire-kicked…if everyone was focused on finding the demonstrably best solution to well-articulated scenarios, the world would be, IMHO, a better place…and the perceptions Bill referred to would take care of themselves expeditiously.

The second point is that my bug metaphor, above, has a basis in published research: Valverde, et al, from the University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, published “Self-organization patterns in wasp and open source communities” in IEEE Intelligent Systems, March-April 2006 (Volume 21, Issue 2). In this “comparative study of how social organization takes place in a wasp colony and OSS developer communities” they found “both systems also define interacting agent networks with similar common features that reflect limited information sharing among agents.”

And if you didn’t think that I really do care about tracking down every single bit of knowledge available to understand “what’s really going on”….I read the whole thing.