Similarities and Differences between Open Source and Enterprise 2.0.

Dear blog readers, it has been a few weeks since my last post and I hope you have not forgotten about me. I have been pretty focused on the onboarding process for my new job, a time which is not very conducive to blogging. I’m also in the middle of moving my family across county – quite a stressful experience. But I miss you, and hope that you miss me too – so I figured I’d check in and give you all an update about what I’m thinking about these days.

My new role – being the director of Open Source for Yahoo! is quite fascinating and enjoyable. I’m learning a lot, meeting and working with wonderful people, and gaining an appreciation for many new perspectives on the workplace and marketplace. Thus far, however, my role has much less to do with the Enterprise 2.0 work that I have been involved in over the recent years. And this puts me in an interesting position – since I’m not leveraging my strongest skills at work. So I’ve been thinking about the similarities and differences between these two concepts.

Some personal history, in case you are interested: I was involved with Open Source activities when I worked at Fidelity Investments a few years ago. I co-authored their Open Source policy and helped launch their Open Source Support Center. I also led a corporate-wide initiative that leveraged an Open Source framework to create a platform for dozens of .NET applications (yes, there is Open Source in the Microsoft world; it’s just done their way). This activity introduced me to Enterprise 2.0 – as I had to work beyond organizational hierarchy to create products that were a result of community effort – fueled by trust and egalitarianism, not corporate edict.  So I moved from Open Source and .NET development to pursue Enterprise 2.0 in the general sense. And now I’m returning to the application of social work structures as it relates to building software – alas, no .NET.

I’m now focused on the part of Open Source in which people from different companies, with different and perhaps competitive interests, work together to build a software solution that everyone can use. Building something together requires trust, a sense of shared fate, and shared faith. Trust is the passport to entry.  Shared fate (the idea that my actions affect the community, and vice versa) is required to ensure that no one can harm someone in the community without harming the community as a whole – and himself. Shared faith is required to create a unified vision for what is to be developed.

But Open Source presents some important differences to Enterprise 2.0 too. The origins of the Open Source idea were based on the desire to undermine the notion of proprietary code, software patents, and intellectual property rights that corporations rely upon for both legal protection and financial gain. Over time, more pragmatic ideas have since been incorporated in the field, and co-exist with the more ideological camps. In contrast, I have not seen any Enterprise 2.0 pundit preach the need to undermine the corporate structure for the ethical betterment of human knowledge. Enterprise 2.0 is more of an observation that traditional management structures are insufficient for modern knowledge work in a connected age.  We need more, and we can get more with E2.0 — and it actually helps the company directly.

Another difference is that Open Source work is governed by licenses – legal documents that stipulate rights and obligations regarding the use of the code. The terms of these licenses are quite relevant to Open Source – since some licenses are permissive and other restrictive.   Some are well-received in corporate settings, and others are viewed as a threat and are avoided. Enterprise 2.0 work is rarely governed by licenses – and although corporations state privacy challenges as one of the barriers to Enterprise 2.0, few state concern over being sued for non-compliance to the social contract that governs conversations.

I have found that the greatest similarity between Open Source and Enterprise 2.0 is that both share a healthy oral tradition of positivist mythology (My term. compare to Mythomoteur) . Both have pundits that are quick to point to the oft-repeated examples of success as a way to indicate that you too will be successful. Perhaps Open Source has even more believers – as I often hear people tell me that they want to donate their code to Open Source so that others will come by and fix their bugs for them, for free. They remind me of those who believe that installing a corporate wiki will result in a well designed, dynamic, and collaborative intranet. If only it was that easy.

Positivist mythology is important for both beliefs – as it encourages experimentation and boosts faith. But it’s also a bit deceiving too. Contributing code to Open Source does not guarantee that anyone else will contribute to it. Open Source code is not, by definition or experience, better than proprietary code – it could be, and some is. Nor is it worse. Rather, there are many examples of Open Source code that are wildly successful. These examples are so bright that they overshadow the tens of thousands of Open Source projects that lie dormant, abandoned, and incomplete. Some types of applications thrive in the open source world – software frameworks for example. But someone at work reminded me that you don’t hear much about Open Source payroll systems or medical devices (comment below if you know otherwise).

By stating there is mythology here, don’t think I’m a non-believer. I have seen both E2.0 and Open Source prove to be undeniably valuable. But achieving success is rarely simple. You need a well-orchestrated combination of culture, tools, need, trust, timing, and personality to make this work. When it does, it’s wonderful.

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Tagged as: Open Source