Open Source stands together

March 13, 2008 - 2:24am by bmann Tags:

Matt Mullenweg had to make a pretty clear statement that WordPress is Open Source in response to some sniping from MT.

I already left a comment in support of Matt, and he tossed it back my way:

Thanks Boris, I think the way Drupal and WordPress have co-existed is a great model to follow despite a few distractions along the way, and your role in facilitating that as an ambassador has been crucial. It’s rare for code for one project to be directly applicable to another, but ideas and values are contagious — in the good Isley Brothers way.

I know how this can be. We flirted with dual licensing around Bryght's mass hosting system, Hostmaster. In hindsight, it probably delayed development by 2 years. Now hosted on Drupal.org, Hostmaster has a couple of more developers buying in and it feels like we're developing some momentum.

We made a Bryght "install profile" -- a bundle of code and configuration and a little custom module for doing some cool stuff with CSS overrides. From day one, it's been hosted on our public SVN repository, and includes the original CVS tags from Drupal.org itself.

It was amusing to watch that MT4 actually had as a feature that other systems had adopted their templating system -- namely a single contributed module in Drupal that can support MT themes for bloggy sites.

Basically, sniping other open projects isn't cool. In the first meetings that the Drupal community ever had as a group, in Antwerp and Amsterdam, we had Joomla community members and senior devs. It was so fun playing with the Joomla guys and matching t-shirts and groups shots with Rasmus at OSCMS 2007. Amy Stephens +1 -- check out Open Source Community.

The "enemy" here is proprietary systems (and those really are quotes around enemy, as I recall having a great discussion with a proprietary Java based system developer this morning at CCI2008). They are not good for business, they are not good for communities, and they are not good for the growth of this interlinked web of data that is becoming truly useful.

I ran a couple of not really that successful because they were TOO Drupal heavy "Open Source CMS Summits". I'd love to do more of them, because we have so much to learn from each other, but we are all so focused on growing our own communities, each bit of *friendly* rivalry pushing the others to get better. Like the Isley Brothers :P

Comments

Submitted by Simon Pavitt (not verified) on March 14, 2008 - 1:21pm.

Northern Voice talk

Seems a bit ironic as Matt went out of his way to talk about the importance of open source software during his talk at Northern Voice (2008), down as far as listing the four freedoms.

This was not just how it brings benefits to users and developers of technology projects, but also suggesting how the methodology could be applied to society as a whole.

For instance, he gave as an example the possibility of laws being drafted and amended using a wiki, so that there was a public record of who made what changes, when and why.

Submitted by Louis Landry (not verified) on March 13, 2008 - 10:11am.

Well Said.

Well said Boris.

It is important that we as open source software projects (and especially free software projects) find ways of working together and promoting ourselves. If there is one thing that open source software development has taught all of us it is that all of us are better than one of us. In my view that idea should not only exist without our respective projects but between our respective projects.

I look forward to an opportunity to join a more balanced and diverse OSCMS summit soon, and I would hope to see you there.

Louis

Submitted by Jakob Petsovits (not verified) on March 13, 2008 - 8:32am.

Disconnect

> The "enemy" here is proprietary systems (...). They are not
> good for business, they are not good for communities, and
> they are not good for the growth of this interlinked web of
> data that is becoming truly useful.

I feel that this is quite an important point, and am glad that you recognized this and pulled this though at Bryght with such consequence.

Even more so, I'm puzzled that lots of Drupal people like you, who really do get open source to its very core, only apply this insight to their specialized domain (web apps, in this case) but not to other stuff in computing like operating systems (say, Apple) or mobile phones (...you get the idea).

It's not like there's no legitimacy to develop open source on proprietary systems, but I'm just wondering how it's possible to be totally passionate on this issue for one part of the ecosystem and totally ignore it for others.

I've always been amazed by the clarity of your thoughts - and rhetoric :D - and I'd find it very cool if you could blog about this (only perceived?) disconnect.

Submitted by Duane Storey (not verified) on March 13, 2008 - 12:08pm.

iPhone

I think that's interesting as well. I did a post about how I was disappointed with Apple's closed distribution system for the iPhone that relies on digital signing and iTunes. I took some flack via email from people who were like "well clearly a closed approach works to everyone's benefit, and allows access to markets people wouldn't otherwise have access to. Plus it adds security to applications etc". And yet a lot of these people would probably argue completely opposite when presented with a Wordpress discussion, or other popular OS software, especially in terms of it being more secure.

Anyways, my example isn't entirely relevant since it's sort of going beyond code, but I agree with your observation.

Submitted by Duane Storey (not verified) on March 13, 2008 - 4:06am.

Open Source

I caught the tale end of that battle. If I got the name right, that was Anil Dash? If so, I thought it somewhat coincidental that two of the NV keynote speakers were going at it. Obviously I'm on the open source side as well, although like most people, have dabbled with different licensing schemes as well.

I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out problems with OS projects, just be willing to point that mirror back at yourself or your own project from time to time as well.

ps - it's pretty weak that drupal fails a comment because the home page URL doesn't have http:// in front of it.. Next time I'm at your place let's fix that.

Submitted by Duane Storey (not verified) on March 13, 2008 - 10:21am.