Open Source is Open Source, right?

Wrong. While it’s not healthy for projects to spend forever arguing about philosophy or politics, community is important for a project to be successful, which is why of the following 2 statements, I prefer the Apache way.

Apache: “community is more important than code”

OpenJDK: “OpenJDK is all about code. Actual bits that do something. The opposite of politics.”

(note, I’m not endorsing any specific ‘politicization’ at OpenJDK, I have no idea who/what is going on there).

2 Responses to “Open Source is Open Source, right?”


  1. 1 Andreas Sterbenz May 30, 2007 at 6:31 pm

    Great example. I talk about code. You make it appear I am defining policy for OpenJDK, and then use that policy to criticize OpenJDK. Nothing to do with furthering agendas of course.

  2. 2 davidillsley May 30, 2007 at 7:36 pm

    I don’t know how to take that comment.

    I genuinely don’t have an axe to grind with OpenJDK. Yes, I’m skeptical about it (specifically its governance, especially in the short term) but I have nothing personal to gain by its success or failure (well, actually, as someone who makes a living by writing Java code, I probably do have something to gain if it succeeds and lose if it fails).

    I take your point about making it appear that you’re defining policy, but in some sense I hope/believe you are, that’s one of the things I believe open source is about – decisions made by the community, and you’re presenting yourself as part of the community.

    More broadly though, it does reflect other statements I’ve seen from others talking about OpenJDK – that people shouldn’t worry about politics and governance because the important thing is that the code is there. If your post was the first thing I’d seen with that sentiment I wouldn’t have commented.

    If you don’t think your views reflect the views of many in the OpenJDK community I’ll be happy to update the post to reflect that.


Leave a Reply




About

I’m David Illsley, I work in Web Services development at IBM Hursley, which involves work on the Apache WS Project, where I am a committer and PMC member. When not working with technology, I spend a lot of time on the backstage aspects of theatre, and a sadly decreasing amount of time reading.

Archives

c

Disclaimer

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

Twitter Updates

  • whoa: "at peak, roughly 3 Gigabits/sec of traffic go between FarmVille and Facebook" from http://is.gd/a8UXo 1 day ago
  • Urgh. Forgot about some scheduled downtime... should have stayed in bed 1 day ago
  • Reading @bedlamtheatre EGM minutes and happy to note that things went the right way 3 days ago
  • Hmm. Left my phone for 5 mins... apparently was a mistake. Let me know if you find out what they did. #fb 4 days ago
  • depressed by the BBC retreat in the face of News International 1 week ago