Lit Review: The Success of Open Source (Chpt. 3)

This is a pre-formatted review of an article by Steven Weber, written for a college class.  The content being reviewed can be found at : hfoss-fossrit.rhcloud.com.  Additional publication information can be found at the bottom of this review.

Summary : The Success of Open Source details how Open Source projects exist and survive when confronted by various problems.  How and why do people contribute, how are decisions made, and what social structures exist to help a project survive?

The good stuff : 

• An uncommon insight into how Open Source projects are organized and executed.
• A realistic approach to the problems of open development, and one that proposes interesting and innovative solutions to the problem.
• Well written, and easily quotable.

The bad stuff : 

• Limited in scope, the chapter spends more time thinking about the problems of open development and how to avoid them than how they could be fixed.
• No clear picture of how a project could be passed into other hands without forking it.
• Closed, centralized design feels limited, and the article doesn’t really propose any solutions.

Questions : 

• Are there ways to coordinate community into software design without breaking it?
• How do we encourage volunteers to participate in areas that are not glamorous or highly attractive?
• Are there ways we can better control group dynamics and politics in the power structures of Open Source Projects?

 The Review : The Success of Open Source is a long article, and I don’t feel equipped to make any decisions on whether or not I agree with everything in it.  That being said, it’s a fascinating decent into the structure of FOSS communities that paints a picture of a society that is in no way anarchist or unstructured.  Along the way it raises a large number of interesting questions about how group-think can interact with software development and be managed to create incredibly end-products.  As a conversation piece, the article is fantastic; as a reference it’s even better.  The Success of Open Source diffuses a number of misconceptions I had about the nature of FOSS development, and gives a fantastic jumping point for greater analysis and further research.

Final Rating : Out of 10 stars, I give The Success of Open Source a bucket of ice-cream and three puppies, because finite, linear rating systems are just as meaningless and inapplicable to the dissemination of knowledge as this sentence.

Publication Information : author: Steven Weber, date published: November 30, 2005, source:http://hfoss-fossrit.rhcloud.com/static/books/Weber-SuccessofOpenSource-Chap3.pdf.