Speaking at the Evans Data developer conference in San Jose, California, Behlendorf said that good open source software is more likely to result from projects that are not dominated by the interests of one group or person.
And, Behlendorf said, ASF has actually closed projects and removed members from its ranks who had attempted to dominate proceedings. One theme of Evans’ conference has been strategies in building successful developer relations and open source programs.
Pointing to the ASF model, Behlendorf said: We don’t have project managers. Our belief is, if we build strong communities, communities where there aren’t one or two dominant egos – that can survive one person moving, then good software will result.
ASF is responsible for building the ubiquitous Apache web server, with 70% market share, and home to a number of other popular technologies, including Struts.
Recently, the organization has been viewed as a partner by some closed source vendors who are bringing their own open source projects to market. ASF last year picked-up an implementation of BEA Systems Inc’s Project Beehive, for an open source version of BEA’s Java developer framework used in WebLogic Workshop.
The move follows a decision by Sun Microsystems Inc to base its StarOffice desktop productivity suite, which is finding increased support against Microsoft Corp’s Office, on APIs from the open source OpenOffice suite. Behlendorf claimed 80% of OpenOffice.org’s work is done by Sun but the other 20% [of the community] need something neutral.
Behlendorf said the strength of Projects like ASF and OpenOffice is they can deliver infrastructure products, leaving vendors to implement the software and provide support. There is a good church versus state balance we can follow, he said.
Behlendorf defines successful open source software as software that moves up the stack, from humble beginnings in areas like file and print servers, for example, to challenge closed source vendors working higher-up the stack in applications
Projects like OpenOffice… are the moon shots into the end user space, Behlendorf told conference delegates. There’s this rising tide, I think, and the tide is rising more quickly in some industries than others. If you are a software provider you have to read and read and read the market below you.
