Open-sourcing: how to?
A call for embarking on a collaborative, two week long, research project.
Open-source software. It’s something we’re becoming more familiar with.
Transitioning away from Internet Explorer (shudders) to Firefox some 10 years ago was probably my first exposure to the idea.
Around the same time a family member tipped me off about Wikipedia. My school projects would never be the same.
But despite open-source being a fairly well known concept, some of its finer details are a bit of a mystery.
Especially the intersection between “business” and open-sourcing.
Take Wordpress, for example:
Wordpress.org is the blogging and content management platform of choice for just over 25% of the internet.
The platform is open-source and the company behind it, Automattic, brought in $45 million in revenue back in 2012. (Annoyingly, I cant find more recent figures — but I suspect this is much larger today).
Other companies appear to be giving a hybrid model a crack too. One example that comes to mind is dev community darling, Docker.
And soon to join the ranks is Trailblazer
At Trailblazer we build a tool that keeps your research sessions organised by mapping your journey through the internet. And we’re working through how we can make the switch too.
Open-sourcing makes a lot of sense for us. As a tiny, part-time team we’re bottle-necking the development of a project that we think is for the good of the internet.
36 people agree and have already offered to help us develop Trailblazer. We've been blown away by the response this early on.
Today we’re literally at the business-end of transitioning to become an open-source project.
For you see behind Trailblazer is a company. One that’s already been on a four year long journey and taken on a humble amount of seed investment in the process.
So the questions on my mind are: “How can we do open-sourcing, right?” “Is it possible to make a hybrid model work?”
A model where code is liberated and contributed to by a community of like-minds. But also, one where we co-founders can afford to eat and pay bills too.
We’re not alone in asking these questions
Just last week I was having a Hangout with a like-mind who was wondering about these same questions too. (And a massive hat-tip is owed to Nick, he’s instigated what follows.)
We don’t think that the two of us are alone in asking these questions.
The philosophy behind open-sourcing is alluring. But at the same time capitalism imposes some pretty tough realities.
There’s cognitive dissonance. But perhaps by learning from companies that have made this work there needn't be.
Are you curious too? Let’s join forces and try to find some answers!
The title of our blog is “The Trailblazing Diaries.” Inspired by Buffer’s radical transparency, we want to share what we’re discovering as we go along our journey.
But in true Trailblazer fashion, we want to open a door for you to help us come up with these findings.
Oh, and did I mention that we develop a tool that might help you gather and share what you find? ;-)
Here’s three ways in which you can get involved: (Ordered from least involved, to more involved).
- Does a related blog post comes to mind? What’s the name of other companies that are making this hybrid model work? Simply drop them into this list of suggested resources. Reward: a shout-out on the findings blog post.
- Are you, or someone you know, a person who knows a thing or two about how to open-source things, right? I warmly welcome a chat; slide on over to my inbox. Reward: a shout-out on the findings blog post.
- Want to dive deeper? Put Trailblazer in a recording mode, then trawl the internet in search of answers to these questions. As you stumble upon potential answers, you can post your findings (and a link to your shared trail) here. Reward: your name as a contributor to the findings bog post. Also a shiny new badge on our forum.
And with those details out of the way: happy researching and see you in the Google Spreadsheet!
We’re aiming to do the bulk of our research over the next couple of weeks. But depending on the response, this may transition into a bigger inquiry.
Open-sourcing is great for the community. Let’s see if it’s good for business too.
