Linux Chatroom

Principle of successful collaboration

In the last edition we spoke about three principles- core, connect and contribute. We ended by saying that “better a thousand people making different test at the same time than one person making different test a thousand times” and you will agree with me that this is true,  wouldn’t you? Let us conclude with the other 2 principles so we can appreciate the power of open source.

COLLABORATE
A mass of contributions does not amount to anything unless together they create something ordered and complex. An encyclopedia is not a mass of random individual contributions; it is a structured account of knowledge. People playing a game or building a community need to agree on rules to govern themselves, or chaos ensues. People often think in different ways  because they have very different values; what matters to them differs. Someone who sees the world through art and images will acquire skills — drawing and painting — that make it easier for them to work. Someone who sees the world in terms of numbers and money is more  likely to become an accountant, to use a calculator rather than a paintbrush. A large toolbox that includes both calculators and paintbrushes, both artists and accountants, is good for innovation.

The trouble is that people with fundamentally different values often find it difficult to
agree on what they should do and why. Diverse ways of thinking are essential for innovation;
diverse values, based on differences about what matters to us, often lead to squabbles. This
is why diverse communities often find it more difficult agree on how to provide public
goods, such as health care, welfare benefits and social housing. Diverse groups can become
very unproductive when their differences overwhelm them, provoking conflicts over resources
or goals. Open Source succeeds by creating self-governing communities who make the most of
their diverse knowledge without being overwhelmed by their differences. That is possible
only if these communities are joined around a simple animating goal, if they develop
legitimate ways to review and sort ideas and if they have the right kind of leadership. What
they are not, ever, is egalitarian self-governing democracies.

A very good example of this is the open source community that produces Ubuntu, a
user-friendly version of Linux. Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu’s founder, is like a benevolent
dictator and reserves some decisions for himself, such as the design of the Ubuntu Web site.

The heart of the community, the technical board, meets online to set technical standards and
to define what should be included in the different versions of the program. The board’s
decision-making is transparent and open: anyone can propose additions to policies through
the Ubuntu wiki; the board’s agenda is made available as a wiki every two weeks; and anyone
can attend the online meetings as an observer. The decisions are taken, however, by
Shuttleworth and four other board members, whom he appoints — albeit subject to a vote among
the community’s lead programmers. Meanwhile a separate Ubuntu community council supervises
the social structure, creating new projects and appointing leaders for teams that support
different releases and features of the program, such as those for laptop users. Then there
are the LoCo teams around the world who promote the use of Ubuntu in their country. Someone
can become an Ubuntu member (an Ubuntero) by coding software, documenting changes,
contributing artwork or acting as an advocate for Ubuntu. In mid-2007 the community had 283
core members. Those with most power and responsibility — dubbed Masters of the Universe —
are the core developers and they have their own council to determine who should be allowed
into the guild. And what do we have as a result – A functional Ubuntu Linux operating
system.

The lesson- An effective governance of creative communities is like a lattice-work and it’s
product if not excellent is close to it.

CREATE
Open Source enables a mass social creativity which thrives when many players, with differing
points of view and skills, the capacity to think independently and tools to contribute, are
brought together in a common cause. If the players are distributed they must have a way to
share, combine and cohere around a common goal. However, for much of the time contributors
may work independently and in parallel, often reworking elements of a core central product.
The product grows through accretion and a reciprocal process of observation, criticism,
support and imitation. Most people take part because they get an intrinsic pleasure from the
activity and seek recognition from their peers for the work they have done. These
communities must have places — forums, Web sites, festivals, gazettes, magazines — where
people can publish and share ideas. Social creativity is not a free-for-all; it is highly
structured. Although the lines between expert and amateur, audience and performer, user and
producer may be blurred, those with more standing in the community, based on the history and
quality of their contribution, form something like a tightly networked craft aristocracy.

Social creativity collapses without effective self-governance: decisions have to be made
about what should be included in the source code, published on the site, pushed to the top
of the news list. Participants who do not abide by the community’s rules have to be excluded
somehow. They must respect the judgments of their peers.

The raw material of these collaborations is creative talent, which is highly variable.
People are good at different things and in different ways. It is difficult to tell from the
outside, for example by time-and-motion studies, who is the more effective creative worker.
It is impossible to write a detailed job description for a creative position specifying what
new ideas need to be created by whom and by when. Open source communities resolve the
difficulties of managing creative work by decentralizing decision-making down to small
groups who decide what to work on, depending on what needs to be done and the nature of
their skills. It is very difficult for someone to pull the wool over the eyes of their
peers; they will soon be found out. When it works, peer review excels at sharing ideas and
maintaining quality at low cost.

CONCLUSION
Only when all these five conditions come together at scale to provide a deliberate,
conscious form of social creativity in which many people contribute and collaborate does
full, operational, functional products emerge. Open Source products especially the
commercialized ones are deliberate and organized combination of contributions from a mass of
distributed and independent participants. Collectively trying to solve a complex problem, or
to create something that no individual could produce alone and where creative thinking is
critical, to develop ideas. Open Source products are therefore rugged, stable, safe and with
less and less bug each day. Sometimes, depending on the product, it may take time to
structure and also some time to configure but so also is the tallest building in the world!

Takes time to build but it is the tallest, a beautiful sight to behold and strong as well.
Open Source has diversity of software and products to offer. It is a better alternative to
some other operating systems and solutions in terms of cost, stability and security.
Products ranges from the front-end to the back-end; desktop publishing, office applications,
dns/proxy, VPN, firewall, mail and collaboration solutions for governmental,
non-governmental organization, banking, financial institutes and others. Linux has succeeded
as a product only because the community that supports it has organised itself systematically
to create, share, test, reject, and develop ideas in a way that flouts conventional wisdom.
Join the success wagon. Experience the power of Linux in your offices and establishments.
CORE CONNECT CONTRIBUTE COLLABORATE AND CREATE!
 

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