Wheeler and Open Source

Wheeler, B. (2004). Open source 2007: How did this happen? EDUCAUSE Review, 39(4), 12-27. Retrieved July 4, 2007, from http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm04/erm0440.asp or http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0440.pdf

In comparison to many of the other readings for this week, I walked away from this article feeling very pessimistic about the open source movement. Two areas that Wheeler suggests are problematic are licensing and support. Starting with licensing, Wheeler contends that the licenses are inconsistent and many institutional technology transfer offices have prevented viable tools from being used because of different licensing terms. While templates created by EDUCAUSE have helped, it will still take years to rectify the situation. Support is another issue. According to Wheeler, "not all vendors are choosing to support a range of open source applications" (p. 16).

Wheeler is not optimistic about the future of open source, and he outlines factors such as failure to agree and inability to leverage as evidence of the failure of open source. In contrast, Pan and Bonk are much more optimistic, and state that "research on 'free and open source software' (FOSS) development is now flourishing and across disciplines." So, the question is: What happened from 2004, when Wheeler's article was published, to 2007, when the Pan and Bonk piece surfaced? Is it merely a matter of a difference of opinions, or is something more at play? Has the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies (and the participatory nature of these tools) revitalized the FOSS discussion?

Other topics that are discussed in many of the open source articles for this week are collaboration and community. The words collaboration and community have such positive connotations that it is difficult to think of them negatively, but Wheeler's argument is skewed in that direction. Like many other authors, (e.g., Kapor), Wheeler mentions the importance of community building and collaboration in the FOSS movement. While Kapor believes that open source is "a more efficient as well as a democratic way of developing software" (p. 73), Wheeler is more cautious in his assessment. In examining interviews with members of open source projects, Wheeler found that many reported that the team members "just couldn't agree."

One thing I noticed as I was reading through Wheeler's piece is that he uses the terms open source, home-grown systems, and community source models as if they were synonymous. Are they the same or do these terms refer to different things? The other authors we read for this week didn't shift their terminology as frequently, which made me question Wheeler's word choice.