Quiz writeup 1: Principles of Open Source

1. What are titles of each Pillar?

Open Exchange

Participation

Rapid Prototyping

Meritocracy

Community

2. What are the titles of each General Principle?

Make it interesting and make sure it happens : An open source project should be “cool”, it should offer a tangable benefit to the people volunteering.

Scratch and Itch : Give people something they need.

Minimize how many times you need to reinvent the wheel : Don’t do everything from scratch.

Solve problems through parallel work processes whenever possible : Allow people to work on different tasks.

Leverage the law of large numbers: Use your community to solve bugs and other problems.

Release early and release often : Don’t get sucked into chasing perfectionism.

Talk a lot:  The flow of communication fuels development and allows you to draw in more contributors.

3. What are the similarities between Weber’s eight principles, and the five pillars?

Both have an emphasis on quick release schedules, and on effective community involvement.  The principle behind both sources is that when managed correctly, largescale community involvement allows you to more easily surmount obsticals.

4. What are the differences?

That being said, Weber focuses mostly on implementation of Open Source, not on the finished result.  His general principles are designed as advice on how to make an Open Source project succeed, not as a description of the final state of that project, or what ideals it should shoot for.

5. Bonus questions

Weber draws heavily upon Eric Raymond’s writings from the Cathedral and the Bzaar, which is another book I haven’t read but probably should.