Hans Bezemer

Netherlands

IT consultant

I remain baffled how little most columnists understand of OSS. They address the OSS community like it is a company - which it is fundamentally not! There is no enterprise wide policy, no shareholders, no CEO. It is what it is: a community.

This community exists of developers, translators, artists and users. Individual users that is. Just like there are individual developers.

These developers started out as individuals that had an itch they wanted to scratch. Other developers followed and - hey: we had a project. These developers of these individual project do listen, but only to their users. Usually on a personal basis. They don't know how to listen to corporations that vice versa don't have a clue how to communicate with those developers.

In a recent article on my blog (http://thebeez.vnunetblogs.com/the_beez_speaks/2005/12/every_dictator_.html)
I addressed some of these issues. OSS is much more emotional and personal than closed source development. Until corporations understand how to communicate with these people, they won't get what they want. A firm understanding of how OSS is developed and why is neccesary on a corporate level.

Corporations could e.g. work together by participating - not just being on the receiving end. There is a lot of development going on in corporations that rots on their selves - what a shame!

In short: if corporations want to get what they want, they have to become part of this culture. Like MySQL, IBM, etc.

And that OSSers like Linux (simply because it is the OS of their choice, like me), forget it - that isn't an issue at all if you don't forget how personal and emotional OSS is - part of the culture. Most OSS projects have Windows versions.

Columns like yours show one more time how little you people understand of OSS and how vital it is you SHOULD understand.