November 3rd, 2008
Community relations key to open source success
Novell has announced its first community elected board for OpenSuse, with 178 people voting. Henne Vogelsang was the most popular insider, Pascal Bleser the most popular outsider.
It’s not a purely popular vote, as you can tell from the total. Only OpenSuse members were given the franchise. But these are the people most affected by what OpenSUSE does so no objection here.
Matt Asay and Joe Brockmeier (former co-blogger here, now OpenSuse community manager) are jazzed, but I think it reflects an acceptance of a new reality.
Even a corporate-managed open source project needs a strong community to survive. The customers are paying the “taxes,” as it were, that keeps the whole thing alive. They deserve representation.
But finding the right balance here is a bit like creating an 18th Century Constitution. Who gets to choose? Who is to be considered part of a project’s “middle class,” for governing purposes?
Matt acknowledges in his post that the nobles of open source, the corporate sponsors, cannot be the sole estate here. On the other hand we don’t want corporate heads on pikes, or its equivalent.
When a project forks and the mass of the market moves to the fork, this is the functional equivalent of a successful coup.
So what is the right balance between community and corporate interest?
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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