The Good, Bad and Ugly of Open Source in Government

I gave a talk in NYC called "Open Government:  Lessons Learned" and I am going to share some slides over the next few days.

•  The first motivation with open source software is typically about saving money.
• If saving money is higher than #3 on your list you likely have the wrong motivation.  Choice and  Flexibility, Security, Standards and building on a platform all should rank higher than saving money.
• You're not NSA, don't try to be.
• Unless you measure your Data Center in acres and you have floors of world class Ph.D.s , then don't fork your own OS or major application.
• There is a fine line between clever and stupid. 
• A room and/or software library full of new piece parts will end up being a history bin full of old piece parts.  Think governance.

David Axmark's Open Source Law

I was speaking with David Axmark, Co-Founder of MySQL, at the Chaminade Resort atop the Santa Cruz Mountains that overlooks Monterey Bay. David made a very interesting statement that really caused me to pause and think. We were discussing open source and David said, "you are not doing open source until someone says no."

The key point David was making was that if you are open sourcing your code but retaining 100% control of your entire code base, that is not doing real open source. Obviously, there are many examples of companies/individuals doing this type of release (retaining 100% version control) very successfully, but David makes a great point.

There is a corollary on the sales side of the house that I heard many, many years ago which says:

You are not selling until the customer says NO.

There are not too many Laws that have both technology and sales parallels, but this is clearly one of them.