Open-Source is an art form
Great open-source projects can be compared to great pieces of art and art should always be driven by passion. Only when this driving force is pure and real, art lives forever, no matter the reason it appeared on the first place.
It all sounds poetic and good and, as a company, I would probably like to proudly invest in these kind of art pieces, but passion cannot be bought with money, never. This simple theorem, since the beginning of time, made business and art two entities with a really complex relationship. It is not uncommon for them to be in a raging state of refusal, then jump to a symbiotic existence or to complete independency.
Beside of the unanswered question of “how do we make art to happen” (read art as valuable opensource here), the other big, and controversial, question for companies is “why do we need art in the first place”. The artist itself, pretty often, does not know why he needs to do it, he is just reacting to a very intimate needs of expression and sharing.
If we consider a work of art as the highest expression of a “crafting” activity, it is easy to imagine every artisan to have the “state of the art” as a model for their creations, but it is as well hard to imagine them to slow down their work and risk their income source in order to explore ways to change the state of the art by themselves.
Relating this topic to software development becomes easy to understand why developers admires (yes they should) open-source as a pure form of “artistic” evolution path for an otherwise purely business driven crafting field. On the other hand making investors accept the risk of allocating resources into open-source it often looks like a snake oil exchange in the old west.
In lot of ways open-source software is the equivalent of public research papers in other technical fields, the main difference, though, is that given the virtuality of software it is incredibly easy for anyone to share, contribute and create new things that are not only theoretical but, most likely, ready to use. What they share, instead, is the business concern if it would be worth or not to invest in it.
Some of the business friendly arguments for open-source usually revolves around creating prestige for the brand in order to attract good developers that will eventually help to make more money. In some markets openness is also a way to attract customers and or to get crowdsourced content for free. Someone from the engineering department may also add that is very good for them as it enforces higher standards in code quality and may leads to valuable external contributions and issue spotting.
These are all good reasons independently of the point of view, and I’m probably missing a lot more, but at some point we all have to face and accept the fact that what we are trying to sell is in fact a necessity, not only for the industry, but for human progress itself. Researching new ways to do things with no guarantee of success or results at all is what progress is all about and no progress in human history coulded happen without sharing these mere product of art in its highest sense.
from the business perspective, though, it is a lot like gambling: you invest resources on something very uncertain hoping to get some early adoption reward or, more often, a big visibility boost and the hope that the internal culture influence may lead in the end to get more money.
taking back the similitude with what we traditionally intend with art and science, companies who invest in open-source are like Renaissance courts, the more they could afford to invest in art and science, the more they gained in prestige and attracted more artists and scientists. While the original motivations where probably more business related than purely humanistic, it started a virtuous circle of competition that indeed led to a notable progress for humanity and, by inclusion, for the court itself.
Would be interesting to analyze how much of that art was commissioned and how much was just “sponsored”. Artists of course have to make a living, but on the other hand art never works that well on demand, and a lot of antiques and modern money driven “art” productions can prove it. A good sponsor should find ways to let it happen without asking for it, a bit like sex. Beside the easy pun, sex involves emotions exactly like art, that’s why they share this untameable nature. You cannot grow white truffles, but you can preserve their habitat, in the same way you cannot create emotions, but you can build a favorable environment, being it dim light and Berry White, or a poplar tree forest.
Coming back to open-source, we should hope that companies will compete on creating the right environment to let it happen, so that “state of the art” software can evolve. The effort should exist at different level, but mainly developers need to embrace the idea of being part of a progress that still have to be written and sacrifice some short-term productivity in favor a open-source first mindset. At business level, instead, we need to invest on creating the environments where not only open-source first has the space (and pace) to exist, but, more importantly, a “passion-first” researching environment should be favored and encouraged.
Building the boat dreaming the vastness of the sea is not enough, people should be free to choose their dreams, otherwise we will sail forever but never fly.
