Open source licensing, community and contribution are important topics. This week there were a number of interesting blog posts and tweets on the subject which might be summarized by a tweet from Matt Asay (#mjasay)
@maslett moral of story? platforms flourish on permissive licensing. GPL is a capitalist’s best friend. Apache/EPL are a community’s
Related blogs (along with several others):
- A good post from Matthew Aslett of 451 Group
- http://www.sonatype.com/people/2010/01/why-we-chose-the-gpl-for-nexus/
- Permissive or Reciprocal? Choosing the Right License by Joe Brockmeier
I agree, license and copyright are factors in creating and fostering communities but I don’t think it’s the most important set of factors. License and community, while related are very much separate issues. Open source tends to fetish license and thus it’s over-emphasized in conversations where it at best a contributing factor.
Apple, Google, Drupal, Linux, Microsoft and many, many other examples demonstrate just how little restrictive license and copyright of the core software matters to the size and contribution of the community. Permissive licenses can increase adoption as well as forks and closed derivative works, all of which cannot so simply be considered community.
Relevancy, utility, inclusion, opportunity, transparency, recognition and common vision / interests are what drive the size and output of community. It’s leadership in a project that sets the tone for the priority of these aspects. A small or under-performing community (proportionate to its potential) is more likely related to its leadership than its license.
—
Related:
An incomplete identification and factoring of some areas around open source that support the ideas in this post:
I’m more with @maslett on this one.
I think an open source project’s licensing has a ying/yang relationship with its community.
There are a lot of worthy contributors who would stay away from a project if they don’t like the license. So this affects how fast and in what ways the community around a project grows.
Another way to think about it is that license is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a vibrant community.
Leadership is more important to manage how and when people leave. In other words, the itch to make it better makes them come to project, good leadership keeps them there.