Phipps’ recent post, “Is the ‘Open Source Bubble’ Over?“, talks on the same topic and says that the true open source way has always been community and collaboration.  He and Aslett refer to Stephen O’Grady’s post, “The State of Open Source: Startup, Growth, Maturity or Decline?“, which is rich with trend analysis over the years to show that some projects  are in maturity, but overall open source is growing with all the return to community and collaboration.

This is a really exciting point they are making.  As many people know, a hallmark of Red Hat’s activities in open source has always been a focus on upstream collaboration and scaffolding for strong communities.  When we acquire a company with an existing codebase or open source community, you see a clear set of moves.  Codebases are released under open source licenses to spur the greatest open community we can, where Red Hat actively participates.  Communities are grown without an attempt to control the intellectual property.

This re-emphasis of the communities that include vendors and customers acting equally on common needs was described in 2004 by Michael Tiemann in ‘The Open Source Triple Play‘.  I regularly redraw this image to explain how and why Red Hat does business:

I was tickled that Aslett included JBoss as an example of the third stage, which he summarized with the first two:

While the first two stages were focused on collaborative development as a by-product of open source licensing the projects and vendors that characterized the third stage were focused on market disruption through widespread distribution and typically eschewed the potential advantages of collaborative development in favour of control over the future development of the project.

When Red Hat acquired JBoss, the clear methodology they had was to hire anyone from the community who started to do any real work with the open source codebase.  This kept all the copyright in the company, what I once heard JBoss founder Marc Fleury refer to as a “strong IP” position – strength in holding intellectual property.  But this was at the downfall of a strong community – it couldn’t stand well on its own if every active contributor was hired to be  part of the same corporation.  To an extent, this was incurring the cost of a closed development model where you have to pay for every developer hour, while not gaining the supposed benefits of a product that can’t be downloaded and freely distributed without you being paid.

As Simon Phipps ultimately points out, this is the way many of us have been doing open source business all along.  The fact that customers are finally figuring out that there is a triple-play in this for them, too, is many shades of awesome.

So, friends new and old, come on in and play.  The water is warm and the waves are just enough to make things regularly exciting.

A quick look at the numbers:

• 15 students and projects.
• 20 primary mentors, with 15+ more general mentors (includes mentoring the mentors)
• Three funding sources (two from Red Hat) are making the proof of value program happen this summer:
  • We know the concept works (thanks Google’s Open Source Programs Office!), with specific value to Fedora Project and JBoss Community in this 5-year summary report.
  • We have a model to include other sponsors and are actively seeking them.
  • The work this summer proves to those potential sponsors the value of this program.
  • The sponsors who lay a wager by supporting the program for the southern hemisphere this October are buying their own proof of value to see if they want to continue next year.

Next on the schedule is the mid-term review.  During that period, mentors review and privately discuss the state of each project and the student.  The goal of a project is to help the student learn FOSS participation via the Fedora Project and JBoss Community. Ideally, there is good code or content that comes out of it, but completing the initial project plan isn’t the real purpose.  As often happens, in open development we discover new ideas, methods, and reasons along the way.

For example, this week I spoke with a mentor who’s student is struggling a bit with the initial scope of the project plan.  If the only goal were to get that coding done, we’d all be in trouble.  However, the mentor is going to work with the student to narrow the scope so that it is achievable within the schedule.

Having to rescope and reorganize is not uncommon in the FOSS worlds, and this student is learning that reality first hand.  We’re all ambitious with our ideas and skills, and sometimes don’t learn until immersed what is hard and what is easy.  It’s better to rescope and complete a smaller project than to leave in frustration.  Guiding the student in that way is what the mentor is here for, as much as anything else.

In terms of sponsoring, my goal is clear.  I want to see this program run the way we run free and open source software projects.  By bringing in other sponsors, we create more room for innovation in the program’s organization and implementation.  We give these friends and partners a chance to reap the same benefits with a similar investment.  In the process, we work together to strengthen the FOSS ecosystem in to higher education.

Guess what we call that?  Yeah, the open source way.

8:45 a.m. – Welcome & introductions, Michael Tiemann

9:00 a.m. – Dr. David Upton, Chair of Operations Management, Oxford University

9:45 a.m. – Free and Open Technologies: A Policy Update from the European Union, Karsten Gerloff, President, Free Software Foundation Europe and Graham Taylor, Chief Executive of OpenForum Europe

10:30 a.m. – 15 MINUTE BREAK

10:45 a.m. – Matt Jadud, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Allegheny College

11:30 a.m. – Wikimedia: Strategic Planning the Open Source Way, Eugene Eric Kim, Cofounder & Principal, Blue Oxen Associates

12:15 p.m. – 15 MINUTE BREAK

12:30 p.m. – Q&A: Creative Commons and the Music Industry, Daniel James, director, 64 Studio Ltd.; Curt Smith, solo musician, singer and songwriter as well as co-founder of Tears for Fears; and musician Brad Sucks

1:15 p.m. – The Stimulus and Standards, Dr. John Halamka, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School and chair of the US Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel

2:00 p.m. – 15 MINUTE BREAK

2:15 p.m. – Michael Tiemann, Vice President of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat and President of the Open Source Initiative

3:00 p.m. – Open Source License Compliance, Richard Fontana, Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel, Red Hat, Inc.

3:45 p.m. – 15 MINUTE BREAK

4:00 p.m. – Open Source for America, Jeremy Allison, Linux Evangelist, Google, and Terri Molini, public/investor relations consultant with Initmarketing, the Open Source Marketing Agency

4:45 p.m. – The Open Source Way: Creating and nurturing communities of contributors, Karsten Wade, Sr. Community Architect, Red Hat, Inc.

There are already two lessons learned from this first Open Your World Forum — learning as you go is part of the open marketing experience.

First, the team put together the forum on very short notice and elected to use a known system for presenting, provided by a vendor (Thomson Reuters), rather than research open source solutions. I haven’t seen this system, but I’m fairly certain it is not an open source project.   This is the kind of thing that happens in the real world, where time, money, and opportunity are finite.  The key from here is to get it in the plans to use an open solution next time, and I understand that is the case.  Perhaps John Adams will write a post about the experience for the business channel.

Second, the presenter selection could use some diversity in voices, particularly different cultures and sexes.  As I commented extensively, the presenter crew is 100% men and 92% European in ancestory.  I think we can do a lot better than that, and I’ll do what I can to help find that diversity to add to the width and depth of the voices at future Open Your World Forums.

If you are going to be at OSB10, I’m talking Wednesday 02 June from 1:30 – 2:15pm in Broadway.  I arrive Tuesday morning and am back out Thursday by Lunch, so a nice long window to talk free and open topics.

We cooked up a poster and information packet you can read, use, and pass around.  It’s mainly about getting people to the main POSSE Cali page, then to apply.

Otherwise, we are looking for attendees.  If you know any educators or good networkers around education, please pass on the information.  We need to get more people, it makes it better for all involved.

Whittling from the set of slides I used for Ignite CLS West, I cajoled them in to six slides that still follow the principles of presentation I want them to follow. Big font, few slides, can be given in ten or forty minutes.  As part of my standard procedure, I included a set of notes for each slide.  The idea is to make the works more reusable, as well as help me keep on point when talking.

http://quaid.fedorapeople.org/presentations/Presenting-The_Open_Source_Way.odp

http://quaid.fedorapeople.org/presentations/Presenting-The_Open_Source_Way.pdf

We’re having the West Coast’s first POSSE this 5 to 9 July in Mountain View.  I’ll be there as an instructor, as well as Alolita Sharma from the OSI, and my colleague and POSSE co-founder Mel Chua.  If you come, you’ll learn about how to become productively lost, which is the key to navigating myriad free and open source software projects.

While you are thinking on that, think about these three reasons POSSE is attracting so much interest:

1. POSSE doesn’t solve all problems that academics face, but it works really well in a particular area.  If you plan to teach a class that includes open source development, or are even considering it, POSSE is the workshop for you.
2. The POSSE curriculum is very broad and applicable from the largest and most prestigious four-year research schools to two-year community colleges or even advanced science high schools.  This is because, like learning to ride a bike on city streets, we all need the same basic skills and experiences.
3. Being an alum of the class provides you hooks in to the POSSE community, which is at the crossroads that the Teaching Open Source project has been slowly occupying over the last few years.  This crossroads is where community leadership from the open source and academic communities are learning from each other and creating programs such as POSSE and the new textbook Practical Open Source Software Exploration: How to be Productively Lost, the Open Source Way.

Attendance is free, and you have to cover your own travel, meals, and lodging — one reason we do these regionally is to get a larger local draw so that more POSSE events can be held in the region as academics spread the word over time.

• Practical Open Source Software Exploration: How to Be Productively Lost, the Open Source Way is a textbook aimed at classrooms, as well as useful for self-learners.  Educators can remix the content, customize it for an environment, and even do all that live with students.
• A K12 Educator’s Guide to Open Source Software is an updated list of free and open source software and resources that K12 teachers can use immediately in the classroom and on any operating system.  The PDF from Máirín’s blog post is focused on design tools, such as for vector illustrating and bitmap painting and image manipulation.¹
• The Open Source Way:  Creating and nurturing communities of contributors is a handbook you can use, remix, and contribute to.

Here’s his list of what is “the secret of success for Canonical”:

1. “Methodically produce incremental upgrades to its OS.”
2. “It is transparent about its goals and plans.”
3. “It releases its software on schedule.”
   1. “In fact, this incremental approach is Ubuntu’s most potent competitive weapon against rivals Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.”
   2. “[I]ncremental releases on a reliable schedule is a quality that appeals to IT departments.”
   3. “That allows IT to test and roll out OS updates much easier and quicker.”
   4. “Ubuntu has established a disciplined upgrade cycle, made it a top priority, and stuck to it. Canonical releases a new version of Ubuntu every six months.”
   5. “This type of transparent, methodical, and incremental upgrade cycle is the future of software.”

If you are familiar with open source development methodologies, you will realize you can substitute just about any successful FOSS project for “Canonical” and “Ubuntu” in that article and it means just about the exact same thing.  In fact, the six month release cycle, which Fedora has been following for as long as Ubuntu (longer if you figure in Red Hat Linux before), we may have inherited that from GNOME, who probably learned it from Mozilla! In fact, the six month release cycle has been followed by Fedora since we inherited it from Red Hat Linux.  The story I hear is that GNOME adopted a time-based release schedule from Red Hat Linux, and others (Mozilla et al) followed suit.  In other words, Ubuntu’s process of incremental, transparent, and rapid and regular scheduled releases is the great-grandchild of Red Hat Linux in the 1990s!

Hiner’s whole list looks like it was derived from “Producing Open Source Software” (Fogel), yet the article reads as if this is something in OSes that only Canonical has figured out.  In fact, what he describes is part of the whole reason Red Hat Linux became Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  Don’t think for a minute Canonical didn’t notice and learn from that, too.

Here is my corresponding list from The Open Source Way for each of the virtues that Hiner ascribes to Canonical:

1. Do not forget to release early and release often and Embrace failure
2. Practice radical transparency from day zero and Take extra extra extra care to have all discussions in the open and Take even more care to do all design and decisions in the open
3. Use a predictable schedule type and stick to it and Release early and release often is for more than just code

In case you are wondering, I didn’t learn all that by watching Canonical or any other single entity

It seems that really what Canonical has done best is convince or allow the media and others to think that they are Linux.

Chris Blizzard pointed out to me that is also the case for Red Hat, that it is equated with Linux and FOSS development.  Yep, and I don’t like it when that happens, either.  In fact, one important part of the Fedora Project legacy has been making it clear there is a lot more to a freed OS than just one brand.

(Article updated regarding the six-month release cycle history after I received several corrections.  Apparently I also forget how much the FOSS world learned from Red Hat over the years.)

This week, Dr. Tim Budd at Oregon State University (and member of the Teaching Open Source community) began using the textbook for a class introducing FOSS programming and contributing.  We’re looking forward to getting feedback from the students.

Being a 0.8 release, it has a few bugs (formatting, mainly, but also some links in one chapter); I’m planning a 0.8.1 update over the next few days.  (The build broke while I was doing the final push out the door, so we had to ship what was published as 0.8 for students to start using.)  As a collaborative writing project, each of us focused on one or more chapters, and cross-edited for each other.  Greg DeKoenigsberg is lead writer and editor, and writing/editing was also done by Chris Tyler, Matt Jadud, Jeff Sheltren, Max Spevack, Mel Chua, and myself.  (I wrote/remixed the chapter on documentation, “Explaining the Code“, with source from Mel Chua and Lana Brindley. You can view the history of the wiki source/upstream for an idea of how it evolved.)  Jared Smith helped me with the wiki2xml conversion.  We used the ‘mw-render’ command from the ‘python-mwlib’ package, using the techniques we created for Fedora Project Docs Team.  (Thanks Paul for getting that package fixed in the nick of time.) It still needed manual clean-up for the final 0.8, but the automagic conversion does the heavy-lifting and gave something we could build with after only a little clean-up.  I converted all that to a Publican-based book, including creating a new branding package ‘publican-teachingopensource‘ using ‘publican create_brand’.  Working with Publican was a total pleasure.  It has matured nicely as a toolchain and is available for other Linux distros and other operating systems. I thank it for a good source package that I’ll be submitting as my first Fedora package.  (More on Publican in another post.)