Digital sustainability of open source communities, Matthias Stürmer, SMWCon Fall 2014, Vienna

Digital sustainability
of open source communities
Dr. Matthias Stürmer
Head of Research Center for Digital Sustainability at the
Institute of Information Systems at University of Bern
www.digitale-nachhaltigkeit.unibe.ch
2 October 2014
10th Semantic MediaWiki Conference
SMWCon Fall 2014 in Vienna
Digital sustainability of open 2 October 2014 source communities 1

Research Center for
Digital Sustainability
Research, teaching and consulting on
● Open Source Software: Community
governance, business models etc.
● Open Data: Visualization apps, open
finance, participatory budgeting etc.
● Open Government: open government
apps, Open Government Partnership etc.
● Net politics: net neutrality, copyright, data
security, Internet governance etc.
● IT procurement: vendor dependencies,
transparency, WTO regulations etc.
Dr. Matthias Stürmer
Post-doc and
Head of the Research Center
for Digital Sustainability
University of Bern
Institute of Information Systems
Chair of Information Management
Engehaldenstrasse 8
CH-3012 Bern
Phone: +41 31 631 38 09
Mobile: +41 76 368 81 65
matthias.stuermer@iwi.unibe.ch
www.digitale-nachhaltigkeit.unibe.ch

Agenda
1.A historic example of digital sustainability
2.The concept of digital sustainability
3.Knowledge perspective in open source communities
4.Elements of a sustainable open source community
5.Conclusions and topics for discussion

Pioneer Plaque (1972)
Source: NASA, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

Voyager Golden Record (1977)
● Gramophone records included in Voyager
1 and 2 spacecrafts
● A „bottle in the cosmic ocean“ intended to
communicate to extra-terrestrials a story
of the world of humans on Earth
● Content: 116 images, natural sounds,
classical music, spoken languages
● Travelling at 60'000 km/h, now around 20
billion km away
● In about 40'000 years Voyager 1 and 2
will be within 1.8 light-years of other stars
Source: NASA, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record

Method how to read the content
EXPLANATION OF RECORDING COVER DIAGRAM
DEFINE THE VIDEO PORTION OF THE RECORDING
THIS DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATES THE TWO LOWEST STATES OF THE HYDROGEN ATOM.
THE VERTICAL LINES WITH THE DOTS INDICATE THE SPIN MOMENTS OF THE
PROTON AND ELECTRON. THE TRANSITION TIME FROM ONE STATE TO THE
OTHER PROVIDES THE FUNDAMENTAL CLOCK REFERENCE USED IN ALL THE
COVER DIAGRAMS AND DECODED PICTURES.
BINARY CODE DEFINING PROPER SPEED (3.6 seconds/ROTATION)
TO TURN THE RECORD (|=BINARY 1, ―= BINARY 0)
EXPRESSED IN 0.70 × 10-9 seconds, THE TIME PERIOD ASSOCIATED
WITH THE FUNDAMENTAL TRANSITION
OF THE HYDROGEN ATOM
OUTLINE OF CARTRIDGE WITH STYLUS
TO PLAY RECORD (FURNISHED ON
SPACECRAFT)
PICTORIAL PLAN VIEW OF RECORD
ELEVATION VIEW OF CARTRIDGE
ELEVATION VIEW OF RECORD
PLAYING TIME, ONE SIDE = ~1 hour
THIS DIAGRAM DEFINES THE LOCATION OF OUR SUN UTILIZING 14
PULSARS OF KNOWN DIRECTIONS FROM OUR SUN. THE BINARY
CODE DEFINES THE FREQUENCY OF THE PULSES.
Source: NASA, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
THE DIAGRAMS BELOW
GENERAL APPEARANCE OF WAVE FORM OF
VIDEO SIGNALS FOUND ON THE RECORDING
BINARY CODE TELLS TIME OF THE SCAN (~8 msec)
SCAN TRIGGERING
VIDEO IMAGE FRAME SHOWING DIRECTION OF SCAN.
BINARY CODE INDICATES TIME OF EACH SCAN SWEEP
(512 VERTICAL LINES PER COMPLETE PICTURE)
IF PROPERLY DECODED, THE FIRST IMAGE
WHICH WILL APPEAR IS A CIRCLE

Images on the Golden Record
Source: http://re-lab.net/welcome/images.html

Sustainability of information
What is needed to provide sustainable information?
1. Data itself
2. Data format specification
3. Method how to read the data
4. Data storage hardware
5. Data player device

Agenda

Definition of 'sustainability'
Original idea of sustainability: Only cut as
much wood so it can grow again.
(Hans Carl von Carlowitz, 1713)
Today's definition of sustainable
development from the Brundtlandt report:
„Sustainable development is development
that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.“
Source: Our Common Future (Brundtland Report) 1987 United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development

Differenty types of sustainability
Ecological
Sustainability
Social
Sustainability
Economic
Sustainability
Digital
Sustainability

Definition of 'digital sustainability'
Marcus Dapp defines:
● Digital resources are handled sustainably if their utility for
society is maximized, so that digital needs of
contemporary and future generations are equally met.
● Digital needs are optimally met if resources are accessible
to the largest number and reuseable with minimal
restrictions.
● Digital resources encompass knowledge and cultural
artefacts represented in digital form, e.g. text, image,
audio, video, or software.
In German: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitale_Nachhaltigkeit
Source: Dapp, M. 2013. Open Government Data and Free Software – Cornerstones of a Digital Sustainability Agenda. In The
2013 Open Reader – Stories and articles inspired by OKCon 2013: Open Data, Broad, Deep, Connected.

Classification of goods
Rivalry
rivalrous non-rivalrous
Private Good Club Good
Common
Resources
excludable
Access
non-excludable
Source: N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Economics, Dryden 1998.
e.g. proprietary software
Public Good
e.g. open source software

Characteristics of digital sustainability
1. Intergenerational justice
No legal obstacles
2. Regenerative capacity
Distributed tacit knowledge
3. Economic use of resources
Reuse of digital assets
4. Risk reduction
No firm dependencies,
transparent architecture
5. Absorptive capacity
Comprehensible content
6. Highest added value
Ideal policy conditions
Source: Stuermer, M. 2014 Characteristics of Digital Sustainability – Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on
Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance ICEGOV 2014
sustainability of open 2 October 2014 source communities 39

Why not 'informational sustainability'?
Source: IDC's Digital Universe Study, sponsored by EMC, December 2012
http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/idc-the-digital-universe-in-2020.pdf

Agenda

Knowledge management theory
● Explicit knowledge
– Raw data, databases, documents, multimedia, source code
– Easy to transfer because it is documented
● Tacit knowledge
– Intuition, experience, skills (speaking languages etc.)
– Difficult to transfer because it 'sticks' within individuals
● Organizational learning
– Knowledge creation, acquisition, diffusion etc.
– Knowledge transformations within organizations

Organizational learning
Source: Nonaka, I. (1994). A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation. Organization Science. Vol. 5, No. 1, pp.14-37.
Drawing from http://gotogemba.com/tag/tacit-knowledge/

Knowledge in open source communities
What does this mean for open source communities?
● Source code is publicly available explicit knowledge
● Know-how about the source code is tacit knowledge
● An open source community has collective intelligence
● Open source projects consist of many components

Mozilla Firefox
As an Example of Package Dependencies in Debian: The Graph of Mozilla Firefox
UNIX command: apt-cache dotty firefox | dot -Tps > dependencygraph_firefox.ps
Source: Sebastian Spaeth, Matthias Stuermer, Stefan Haefliger, Georg von Krogh 2007 „Sampling in Open Source Software
Development: The case for using the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution“

Agenda

Growing of open source projects
Source: 2014 Future of Open Source - 8th Annual Survey results
http://www.slideshare.net/mjskok/2014-future-of-open-source-8th-annual-survey-results

Elements of a
sustainable open source community
A) Good governance
B) Heterogeneous community
C) Non-for-profit foundation
D) Ecosystem of commercial service providers
E) Opportunity for users to get things done
More about sustainable open source communities:
OSS Watch (UK), Building Communities
http://oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/buildingcommunities

Good governance
● Transparent decision processes, participative culture
● Successful example: Eclipse community initiated by IBM
Launch of the
Eclipse Foundation
Release of source
code by IBM
Source: Spaeth, S., Stuermer, M. and von Krogh, G. (2010) ‘Enabling knowledge creation through outsiders: towards a push model
of open innovation’, Int. J. Technology Management, Vol. 52, Nos. 3/4, pp.411–431.

Bad governance may result in a fork
● Unfriendly separation of an open source community (mostly)
● Important sword of damocles of open source projects
– Necessary if initiator or another central player missuses his control
– Sometimes necessary for radical innovations (OpenSSL - LibreSSL)
Some famous examples of open source forks:

History of OpenOffice.org etc.
Source: Presentation of Apache OpenOffice at OSB Alliance Workshop, 30 October 2013 in Stuttgart

LibreOffice fork of OpenOffice.org
Source: Jonas Gamalielsson/Björn Lundell, Sustainability of Open Source software communities beyond a fork:
How and why has the LibreOffice project evolved? The Journal of Systems and Software 89 (2014) 128– 145

Source code statistics
Source: OpenHub comparison https://www.openhub.net/p/compare?project_0=LibreOffice&project_1=Apache+OpenOffice

Elements of a
A) Good governance
C) Non-for-profit foundation

Linux kernel development
Source: YouTube Video „Linux Kernel Development Visualization (git commit history - past 6 weeks - june 02 2012)“
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_02QGsHzEQ

Linux contributions by companies
Companies contributing to the kernel from 2012-03-18 till 2013-06-30:
Source: Linux Foundation 2013 „Linux Kernel Development – How Fast It is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and
Who is Sponsoring It“ http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linux-foundation/who-writes-linux-2013

Linux kernel facts
● Linux kernel development is one of the
largest cooperative software projects ever
● Over 10'000 patches for each kernel release, kernel
updates every 2-3 months
● Since 2005 nearly 10'000 individual developers from
over 1000 different companies contributed to the kernel
● Distributor kernels contain relatively few distribution-specific
changes
● At least 80% of developers are paid to work on Linux
Source: Linux Foundation 2013 „Linux Kernel Development – How Fast It is Going, Who is Doing It, What They are Doing, and
Who is Sponsoring It“ http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linux-foundation/who-writes-linux-2013

Diverse motivations
Why do individuals develop open source software?
Ideology
Altruism
Kinship
Fun
Reputation
Reciprocity
Learning
Own-use
Extrinsic
motivation
Career
Pay
Intrinsic
motivation
Source: Georg von Krogh, Stefan Haefliger, Sebastian Spaeth, and Martin W. Wallin "Carrots and Rainbows: Motivation and
Social Practice in Open Source Software Development" MIS Quarterly 2012, Vol 36 Issue 2, pp. 649-676

Elements of a
A) Good governance
C) Nonprofit foundation

Nonprofit association
● Many large open source communities have an nonprofit
umbrella organization: Linux, Apache, Eclipse, Gnome,
KDE, Mozilla, Python, TYPO3 etc.
● Association/foundation takes care of
– Legal issues (copyright, committer agreements, liability etc.)
– Community building events (conferences, hackathons etc.)
– Documentation (end users, developers, statistics etc.)
– Public relations and marketing
● So why is marketing so important?

Because today's big software corporations are
marketing companies!

Marketing vs. R&D at Adobe
Sales and marketing FY 2013: 1.6 billion $ → 53% of expenses
Research and development FY 2013: 0.8 billion $ → 27% of expenses
Source: ADOBE SYSTEMS INC. FY2013 Form 10-K http://www.adobe.com/investor-relations/financial-documents.html

Marketing&Admin vs. R&D at Apple
Sales and administration FY 2013: 10.8 billion $ → 71% of expenses
Source: APPLE INC. Form 10-K for FY13 http://investor.apple.com

Marketing vs. R&D at Oracle
Source: ORACLE CORP FY 2014 FORM 10-K, http://investor.oracle.com/financial-reporting/sec-filings/default.aspx

Marketing vs. R&D at Microsoft
Source: MICROSOFT CORP. 2013 10-K, http://www.microsoft.com/investor/AnnualReports/default.aspx

Elements of a
A) Good governance

Business models with open source
1. Closed source licenses - For a version of the full project, a larger software
package, hardware appliance based on the project, or extensions to the open
source core.
2. Support subscriptions - An annual, repeatable support and service agreement.
3. Value-added subscriptions - An annual, repeatable support and service
agreement with additional features/functionality delivered as a service.
4. Services/support - Ad hoc support calls, service, training and consulting contracts.
5. Software as a service (SaaS) - Paid access to and use of the software via hosted
or cloud services.
6. Advertising - Software is free to use and is funded by associated advertising.
7. Custom development - Customers pay for the software to be customized to meet
their specific requirements.
8. Complementary products and services - Open source software is not used to
directly generate revenue; instead, complementary products provide revenue.
Source: Question 16 from the 2014 Future of Open Source Survey https://www.blackducksoftware.com/future-of-open-source

OSS Directory
● Website: www.ossdirectory.ch (and .de/.at/.fr/.com/.org)
● Relational database of
– open source products (projects)
– open source service providers
– open source client examples
● Statistics (2013-11-04 / 2014-10-01)
– Number of products: 282 / 386
– Number of service providers: 149 / 292
– Number of client examples: 126 / 291
● Daily approx. 150 Unique Visitors and
800 views and requests per day
● News, articles, events, jobs, videos, weekly
newsletter etc. about open source software
● French translation available since 2014,
English coming 2015

Private-collective model of innovation
● Private investment model
– Return on investment through intellectual property rights
● Collective innovation model
– Public funding for public good production
– Solving free riding problem with taxes
● Private-collective model of innovation
– Coined 2003 by Eric von Hippel and Georg von Krogh
– Private innovations as public goods (knowledge revealing)
– Example: production of open source software by firms
Source: von Hippel, E. and von Krogh, G. (2003) ‘Open source software and the ‘private-collective’ innovation model: issues for
organization science’, Organization Science, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp.209–223.

Elements of a
A) Good governance

Opportunity for users to get things done
How can users influence development in case the
programmers have no „itch“ to work on certain things?
Ideology
Altruism
Kinship
Fun
Reputation
Reciprocity
Learning
Own-use
Extrinsic
motivation
Career
Pay
Intrinsic
motivation

A) Open source feature requests
e.g. on www.bountysource.com
Source: https://www.bountysource.com

B) Project-specific feature lists
e.g. ILIAS E-Learning System
Source: How To Suggest A New Feature
http://www.ilias.de/docu/goto.php?target=wiki_1357_How_to_suggest_a_new_feature

Source: How To Suggest A New Feature
http://www.ilias.de/docu/goto.php?target=wiki_1357_How_to_suggest_a_new_feature

Source: Who Paid What in ILIAS 4.5
http://www.ilias.de/docu/goto.php?target=wiki_1357_Who_Paid_What_in_ILIAS_4.5

C) Institutional crowd-funding initiative
● Overcoming the 'collective action' problem in open source
● Group of professional users of open source office suites in
order to bridge the gap between users and developers
● Under the umbrella of the OSB Alliance, organized as
Working Group Office Interoperability
● Goals of the group:
– Prioritization and specification of requirements from the
user perspective
– Coordinated funding of requirements
– Exchange of experience among
professional users
Source: Website of OSB Alliance Working Group Office Interoperability
http://www.osb-alliance.de/en/working-groups/wg-office-interoperability/

Process of institutional crowd-funding
Phase 1: Initialization
a) Mobilize interest of institutional open source software users, find funding for specification
b) Create clear and common understanding of the issues, ask the experts
c) Result: aggregated requirements, clustered as Use Cases within a specification
Continue only if previous phase is completed successfully
Phase 2: Funding
a) Publish specification as Request for Proposal (RfP), invite comanies to offer
b) Evaluate and decide for best proposal(s)
c) Result: find funding from institutional open source software users for each Use
Case to implement the specification
Continue only if previous phase is completed successfully
Phase 3: Implementation
a) Define project management, sign contracts, start implementing
b) Do testing among open source software users, finalize development
c) Result: Publish new source code, pass it upstream to the open source project

Initiating organizations in 2011
Public Institutions
● City of Freiburg i.B.
● City of München
● City of Jena
● Swiss Federal Court
● Federal Steering Unit for IT (ISB)
● Canton of Vaud
● Another Swiss federal agency
Community organizations
● Association Swiss Open Systems User Group /ch/open
● Association Freies Office Deutschland e.V.
(former association OpenOffice.org Deutschland e.V.)
● Open Source Business Alliance OSBA

Challenges
● Huge knowledge gap: terminology, standard
specification, structures and processes within public
administrations etc.
● Different perspectives: input oriented (=developers)
vs. output oriented (=users)
● Different interests: perfect implementation (developers)
vs. solving the problem (users)

Current OOXML improvements
EUR 50k
Total: approx. EUR 140k (excl. VAT)
EUR 8k
EUR 13k
EUR 4k
Ernst & Young
SUSE
Lanedo
Funding by
● City of Freiburg i.B.
● City of München
● City of Jena
● Swiss Federal Court
● Federal Steering
Unit for IT (ISB)
● Canton of Vaud
● Another Swiss
federal agency
● French ministry
of culture and
communication
EUR 13k
EUR 14k
EUR 15k
EUR 25k

Development results of first project
Source: http://www.osb-alliance.de/working-groups/projekte/ooxml-filter/projektergebnisse-ooxml-filter/

Agenda

Conclusions and topics for discussion
My (no-brainer) advices:
1.Good governance:
Manage your community in a fair way.
2. Heterogeneous community:
Foster diversity within your community.
3. Nonprofit foundation:
Empower the central office of your community.
(and do as much professional marketing as possible)
4. Ecosystem of commercial service providers:
Support companies to provide services for the software.
5.Opportunity for users to get things done:
Provide feature request market place or something similar.

...so Semantic MediaWiki will
continue to fly for millions of years!
Source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_2

Digital sustainability of open source communities, Matthias Stürmer, SMWCon Fall 2014, Vienna

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Digital sustainability of open source communities, Matthias Stürmer, SMWCon Fall 2014, Vienna