search

OpenTechStrategies / open-source-archetypes

A field guide to open source project archetypes
https://opentechstrategies.com/archetypes
Other
95 stars 12 forks source link

Suggested archetype: "The Good Listener" #16

Open choldgraf opened 5 years ago

choldgraf commented 5 years ago

Something that has been nagging me lately about this project (which is amazing, btw) is that I think there's one archetype I've noticed recently that isn't quite covered in this list. These are projects usually run by a single entity (e.g. a tech company) that are "open" about almost everything with the exception of governance. The owner puts a lot of effort into building systems for information sharing, leadership, contributions, and feedback in the lower levels of the project, but it reserves decision-making power for itself at the highest level.

I think this is a particularly interesting archetype as I've seen more large tech companies take this approach for tools they develop as an attempt at getting some good "open source cred" without actually being fully open. An example of this might be Tensorflow, which has many of the qualities of a multi-stakeholder project, but where google fundamentally controls the direction of the project, and is able to make decisions about TensorFlow that are directly tied to Google's infrastructure. I've had many conversations with people who think that TensorFlow is an "open project", largely because google has done a good job of creating lots of opportunities for input and feedback into the community (but without giving up any control of the project).

To that extent, I'd call it a "Good Listener" model :-)

Just a thought in case it's of interest!

kfogel commented 5 years ago

Hi, @choldgraf. Thank you for the comment, and sorry for the long time to respond!

This is an interesting point; I've also seen the pattern you're describing. But I'm not sure I'd call it an archetype on its own -- it's more a thing that can occur with various archetypes. One of the things we're trying to convey with the archetypes is that "open source" does not necessarily mean "consensus governance" or "democratic governance" or any other kind of group-based governance.

Now, to be precise, you used the word "open" by itself, not "open source", to implicitly refer to group-based governance. But still, I'm not sure that I'd want to overload that word to be about a project's decision-making models -- partly because the word is already so overloaded: people often use it to mean whatever qualities they like about open source.

This "Good Listener" mode is something that can happen in a number of the archetypes. Just off the top of my head: B2B, Controlled Ecosystem, Trusted Vendor, Mass Market, and Upstream Dependency. I think you have spotted a pattern that crosses archetypes, and since I'm doing some edits right now, I'm going to see if I can find a good place to discuss this common pattern.

choldgraf commented 5 years ago

@kfogel I think those are all great points. I agree that this kind of behavior could happen in other types of projects as well, and that it's better to be as precise as possible when talking about "open X" :-) Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

jvasile commented 5 years ago

I think there might be some use in categorizing open source behaviors. My preference would be to collect a bunch of them so we can think about them as a group. Until then, one-off discussion might work, but identifying and grouping is key to digging in.