Comments on: Transparency: The New Default?

By: Jim Grisanzio

Jim Grisanzio — Fri, 20 May 2005 03:28:51 +0000

Some nice thoughts here on transparent marketing and launches. We’ve been having a similar conversation in the OpenSolaris pilot project for almost year now in one way or another. Just how do you launch a massive open source project in a transparent way from the perch of a publically-traded corporation? It’s more complex then you think when you consider just how utterly closed the launch process has been. Time will tell, I suppose. I bet that traditional launches will die out soon enough, though. Which would be nice.

You point out that Eclipse is trying to do a transparent launch. I wonder if Eclipse, as a foundation, is more free in some respects to actually implement transparent launches than corporations are. Do you see a distinction between the two organizations? I’m not sure there is, but there very well could be.

By: sogrady

sogrady — Wed, 18 May 2005 01:22:17 +0000

JP: i think actually it’s transparency that begets community. your Windows is a good example of an exception to that rule, but i think Windows is a unique example for any number of reasons (monopolistic positioning, for one). transparency is not the only way to build a community, but it definitely helps, IMO.

Ian: agreed. the level of transparency within Eclipse is certainly admirable, but what i was trying to point out in Dewitt’s example is that it’s early transparency. and actually, i think things like Beagle are at least as transparent if not more so, in that most development gets done on list. but it’s all good, and Eclipse certainly deserves credit for opening itself up.

By: Ian Skerrett

Ian Skerrett — Tue, 17 May 2005 15:20:38 +0000

As you mentioned I am trying for a transparent launch at Eclipse. However, I think Eclipse has also excelled at transparent development. In February 2005 Eclipse published the Eclipse Development Roadmap (http://www.eclipse.org/org/councils/roadmap.html) that details the project plans, themes and priorities and architectre of all the top level Eclipse projects. I don’t know of any other software vendor or open source community that makes this level of information public.

In addition, as we approach the release of Eclipse 3.1 the development team has published their ‘end game’ document that details the development milestones for the next 6 weeks. http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/%7Echeckout%7E/eclipse-project-home/plans/3_1/freeze_plan.html

Sure I am biased but in my experience in the software industry, providing this level of detail is preyy impressive. The end result is that we have a community that is very engaged. For example, last weekend alone we had 20000 people download our new milestone release.

Ian

By: JP Morgenthal

JP Morgenthal — Tue, 17 May 2005 13:53:39 +0000

Tell me, I will probably forget!
Show me, I may remember!
Involve me, and I will understand!

What you define as transparency sounds more like an attempt to build community, because communities have strong staying power when organized around a technology. In the case of IBM, it sounds like they’re trying to buy a community, but that’s a topic for another day. What’s really interesting, is how a community developed around Windows despite Microsoft’s opacity in the early days of its lifecycle. Perhaps too much transparency limits the development cycle of a community because it seems contrived and because those that would form the community don’t have to rely on anyone outside the vendor, hence they never bond, hence the community never forms.