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?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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
> 

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073