Hey Aaron. I mostly agree with your post. I don’t fully agree, however, with “We needed Android because we couldn’t do it ourselves”:
Mostly Qt (and also KDE) developers, and some GNOME developers who where still left developing for Nokia since the N900 and earlier, made the Nokia N9 Swipe phone. Technically the product is a success; look at the N9’s reviews to verify that. Marketing-wise it’s sort of a failure due to, in my humble opinion, a CEO switch at the wrong time and because he didn’t have enough time to learn how good the phone actually was. But even without much marketing, the product is being sold as we speak.
I do agree if you mean with your blog post that for example the N9 happened thanks to local leadership. The leadership that made it happen was employed at Nokia though, and not really a person in either the Qt or the GNOME camp. Rather a group of passionate leadership-taking people at Nokia.
It might have contributed that these technical leaders didn’t see how strong they could have been together during the CEO switch, at the time when Ari Jaaksi left Nokia as soon as Stephen Elop’s plans became clear. I’m not sure.
I think what we can learn from the episode is to put more trust in the person, and the leadership-taking people, who lead the next product developed the way the N9 was developed. Give those people more time onstage at open source conferences.
I’m also sick and tired of Free Software being inefficient and self-destructive due to internal schism. It’s one of the reasons why I’m not working much on Free Software nowadays. As I’m not much of a leader myself, I silently hope some local leader would change this. Maybe somebody at Digia? Jolla? If I can help, let me know.
>> I’m also sick and tired of Free Software being inefficient and self-destructive due to internal schism.
I hear this a lot, and I certainly understand, but consider this: the most important part of freedom is that you have to accept people will do what you do not want them to do. And that is the reason why we fork and schism so often. Because we can. If you get rid of that, you can certainly have a more productive system, but you lose the most important reason that we exist. That is not only true with software, but also any government of institution. Remove the freedom, and you remove many barriers, just at a terrible price. Don’t be too hard on Freedom. It is hard, but that is what makes it so precious, and what in life that is worth anything, is easy? Nothing we all don’t already know, but something I need to remind myself all the time.
In a system with local leaders people are free to fork, start a new group and/or join another group that collaboratively works on a set of goals. This isn’t uncommon in mankind: for example Arabic tribal people in the desert, Bedouins, frequently start new goums that split off over for example economic activities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedouin#Society .
Although I share your worry, I don’t think local leaders in open source negatively influence freedom. For example Richard Stallman probably doesn’t negatively influence what Free Software enthusiasts see as freedom. That doesn’t mean I see Richard’s “freedoms” as freedom for me: I like to work with open source at companies and help them use the software for and in their technology. That sadly is usually hopelessly impossible when trying this together with Richard’s tribe. That’s why I’m not part of his tribe. Meaning that my freedom is secured because I can fork, start a new group and/or join another group. GNU’s copyright assignment policy, for example, is something I see as taking away freedom. But his leadership at FSF and GNU didn’t negatively influence my freedom.
There is a logical fallacy in there, namely: forking is allowed by freedom, therefore all differences are expressions of freedom; freedom is good, therefore all differences are good.
i have no issue with different projects, different points of view, different “tribes”, etc. this is fine, as long as they can coexist without going to war with each other. as long as they don’t exist simply to antagonize others.
there are such schisms and groups, often with both sides feeling very good about themselves (“open source” vs “free software” was one such stupidity that at one time actually had enough momentum as a schism point to cause problems). that is the unhealthy bit.
what part cults of personality play in this is interesting: they aren’t universally responsible for all schisms, they aren’t universally responsible for all draining of motivation and effort. but they are one source of them, they are one source of reinforcing the ugliness that sometimes arises. and they are utterly unnecessary.
so let’s not get distracted and talk about whether forking is good or not. that’s utterly, completely not the topic, and i think we all agree it is a useful aspect of free, participation based systems.
“as long as they can coexist without going to war with each other. as long as they don’t exist simply to antagonize others.”
Yes, this is usually the case when Bedouins start a new goum. I wouldn’t underestimate the role and virtue of a leader of such a tribe, however. I agree that this leader doesn’t or shouldn’t need a cult (of personality). Just good leadership. I don’t really believe that pure anarchy without any leadership works or even exists. In an anarchy there are also leaders. Maybe invisible from the outside, but often dictators when viewed from the inside.
Leadership and inspiration is not the same thing as a cult of personality. They are very different things. I was writing about the negatives of these personality cults, and you’ve written about the merits of leadership. I agree with the points you made, but want to make sure it’s clear that these are two separate conversation topics :)
That said, ““We needed Android because we couldn’t do it ourselves”
Here’s what I meant by this: We didn’t do it, and we didn’t manage to do it in large part because the projects best suited to doing so were too busy with internal strife and discoordination, which was in part fueled and certainly supported by the cults of personality.
we didn’t manage to accomplish this because we didn’t want to. many did. but we didn’t. we could not manage to meet our expectations.
now, just because we did not in the past (“couldn’t”) doesn’t mean we can’t in the future.
the nature of supporting and rallying around positive leadership (even if quieter) is probably one part of the path to turning our “couldn’t do it” into “will do it”.
my blog entry was rather more focused on the reasons for failure, you’re looking here at the ways to improved odds of success. and i applaud that :)
i plan to write more on this topic in future .. look forward to more discussion then.
And I promise that I’ll join the discussion if I feel I can constructively help; if you make it happen.
As a proud owner of a NokiaN9, and having tried lots and lots of android phones, I ended up saying that Android is the question, not the answer. The answer is a full opensource phone, drivers included. Which doesn’t mean andoid is not leveraging and improving linux, but that the goals are different.