Commercial Open Source and Ethical (and practical) Community Engagement
I’m a big fan of commercially supported open source. I’m biased, of course, in that it’s how I get my paycheck. However, having worked on OSS without getting paid to do so, I think there are better outcomes for everyone when a project has financial backing.
A few jobs ago, when I was still working on my degree, I wrote a workflow engine for my capstone project. I was able to open-source it and used it at my work. I felt comfortable making improvements that were relevant to work on my paid time, but any community support or maintenance fell on my free time. When I moved to a new company, the project slowly bit-rotted into uselessness. I tried to find a new maintainer and I moved it to GitHub from code.google.com, to keep it on life support, but it’s functionally dead. If someone tried to adopt it today, I wouldn’t have the time to support them.
Compare that to my current project. If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, the project would carry on. Not only do I get to work on OSS, but I have time to spend with my family. In addition to writing code, I’m not just allowed, but expected to write docs, ensure we have a solid build process, respond to user questions and, in general, engage with the community to make sure users are successful and improve the project based on user needs. It feels like a sustainable approach to developing open-source software, at least for large projects.
Commercial backing does complicate community engagement somewhat. As soon as there’s a profit motive involved, people look at what you’re offering them with some suspicion. I would argue that when you’re engaging with the community, it’s not only ethical but more effective, to follow a few simple rules.
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Be honest
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Respect people’s time
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Be nice
