1. The Why and How of Open Source software Ben Hyde Stefano Mazzocchi Perspectives from the Apache Software Foundation

2. Who we are Ben –ASF HTTPD PMC –Intuit –CMU, BBN, Intermetrics, Palladian, Lotus, Gensym –Three children, Arlington Mass. Stefano –ASF Cocoon PMC –MIT Libraries –Just moved from Italy

3. Open up the source code? Real Cool Ethical Why –does this work? How –Does this work? –Apache does it.

4. Excuse me, but are you all crazy?

5. The numbers! Every 6 Seconds –A new HTTPD Server server appears on the net. Year after year; no sign of the bubble. Consider SourceForge –The largest home for open Source Projects –.8 Million Users –75 Thousand Projects –1 Million Emails a day Ben’s Project at Source Forge Linux in every product at Demo this year! –Open source is redefining the industry. Market Cap? Redhat $3 Billion, Yahoo $40B, …

6. Is this magic? Scarcity? No Scarcity of Talent –The entire planet. No Scarcity of Ideas –Ideas aren’t scarce –What’s scarce is people in the right context No Scarcity of Eyeballs to debug, polish, document. –Many kinds of talent “No Scarcity, No Market, No Problem” Would people write without publishers?

7. It’s A Barn Raising!

8. This is Ethical A Community! –… not a market of buyers, sellers, middlemen but there are market forces. –… not a structure of rules and procedures but we have structures. Just like a Library! –Avoid Rivalry –Avoid Exclusion This is a “Public Good” –Will it be captured by the market?

9. Excuse me, this is the real world!

10. Why does this work? Communities rendezvous around –Common cause –Common rituals –Common sense of responsibility For Open Source? Code is our Barn Raising –We rendezvous around the code But we work hard to let people work in private. –We have ritualistic practices for reworking the code These coordinate the work, maintain the quality, capture the value –We are loyal (locked-in) to this commons. But you can always fork and go it alone; it happens. For the Library? This is the collection.

11. How Does this Work? Distributions Users & Developers Innovations, Ideas, Patches, documents,… Trusted Core Developers Code Held in Common Supply Demand Needs Goods

12. Round About! Institution Building is hard work!

13. Virtuous Cycle -> Public Good Open Goods Stewards Distributors Users/Readers Innovators/Writers Cheap Storage, Cheap Communication, Self sustaining

14. The Apache Software Foundation no-Profit organization started in 1999 incorporated in Delaware, USA started by the Apache Group

16. Why a Foundation? (1) provides a foundation for open, collaborative software development projects by supplying hardware, communication and business infrastructure

17. Why a Foundation? (2) create an independent legal entity to which companies and individuals can donate resources and be assured that those resources will be used for the public benefit

18. Why a Foundation? (3) provide a means for individual volunteers to be sheltered from legal suits directed at the Foundation’s projects

19. Why a Foundation? (4) protect the brand, as applied to its software products, from being abused by other organizations.

20. Main Concepts openness diversity software darwinism Let’s go thru them ->

21. Openness everybody can use everybody can join everybody can disagree everybody can propose changes everybody can see everything

22. Diversity diversity and openness are interlocked diversity increases the ability to adapt diversity enables to leverage a wide range of talent respecting diversity reduces rivalry

23. Software Darwinism software as an evolving entity survives when fits the environmental needs openness enables adaptation close to needs user-driven development beats marketing- driven development:  faster evolution cycles  better interoperability  better platform stability

24. The ASF Structure

25. The Chain of Trust

26. User anybody who is a potential contributor

27. Committer allowed to modify the code we trust them has voting rights may propose new committers

28. Member a members is a committers shareholder of the foundation can propose new members can elect the board can be a candidate for the board election

29. The ASF Structure

30. The Board of Directors makes no technical decisions! manages and oversights corporate assets (funds, intellectual property, trademarks and support equipment) allocates corporate resources to the various projects 9 members elected every year

31. The PMC stands for Project Management Committee manages a project (and its eventual sub- projects) subject to the direction of the board each PMC has the faculty of establishing its own set of rules and procedures for day-to-day project management...... but many share the same

32. Common Day2Day Procedures philosophy coordination decision making

33. Philosophy collaborative software development commercial-friendly license high quality software respectful, honest, technical-based interaction faithful implementation of standards security as a mandatory feature

34. Coordination no meetings! minimal plans no common location communication? email lists! archives! history! version control! [allows undo] very distributed in time and space [enables greater participation]

35. Project Decision Making encourage a bias for action avoid rivalry thru modularity negative votes imply a duty to engage in resolving the issue very very rare to demand a quorum together we call this “lazy consensus”

36. Foundation Operation minimal physical plant [just the servers!] no office space no paid staff all volunteers some auxiliary committees: conferences for example

38. Q&A