The Suitors of Open Source
Balancing 'Freedom & Innovation' with 'Reputation & Regulation'
King Vikramaditya and Betal
In the folklore stories of King Vikramaditya and Betal, the wise and brave king is presented with a series of moral challenges through stories by the clever spirit Betal. Each story ends with a challenging riddle from Betal that the king must solve.
Today, we are excited to share one of our favorite story from this folklore: 'The Three Suitors’.
The Three Suitors
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl named Mandravati. When it was time for her to marry, three suitors approached her parents, each asking for her hand in marriage. However, their requests quickly turned into obsession, as they vowed to kill themselves if Mandravati married anyone other than themselves.
Mandravati’s parents, wanting the best for her and everyone involved, decided not to marry her off to anyone until the issue with the three suitors was resolved amicably.
One day, Mandravati caught a terrible disease and died abruptly. All three suitors, grief-stricken, attended her funeral with deep sorrow and pain. After the funeral, each suitor, overwhelmed by grief, made drastic changes to their lives:
Suitor 1 decided to stay in the cemetery, collecting the ashes of her body and sleeping next to it.
Suitor 2 took her bones to the Ganges to perform her final rites.
Suitor 3 became an ascetic and wandered off.
During his wanderings, Suitor 3 met a mysterious person who possessed a book capable of reviving the dead from the ashes. One night, while the person was sleeping, Suitor 3 stole the book and returned to Mandravati's cremation ground.
By this time, all three suitors had reunited, and with the help of the book, Suiter 3 was able to revive Mandravati from the ashes. Once Mandravati was reborn, or more accurately reanimated, the suitors began arguing and fighting among themselves over who should be eligible to marry her.
Now, we'll pause the story here and pose the same question to our viewers that Betal asked King Vikramaditya.
Who among the three suitors should be the husband of Mandravati?
While Vikramaditya reflects on the answer, let's take a radical step forward and discuss 'Open Source’
Open Source
An open-source project is a collaborative project endeavor where the project's outcome is made freely available for anyone to use, modify, and distribute by its collaborators.
Wait! People Do it For Free ?
We do know that, 'If We’re good at something, We should never do it for free’.
But, when it comes to passion and interest one has to understand that,
Waiting for someone to pay for your passion is like waiting for rain in a drought, it's possible, but you might miss the growth that comes from pursuing it yourself.
So, Individuals or groups with a personal interest or passion often start open-source projects to solve problems without worrying about getting paid or reaping any benefits.
As these projects evolve, they gain traction, become widely adopted, and frequently end up in the devices we use daily.
Open Source Projects Around Us
Linux
Android
Mozilla Firefox
VLC Media Player
7-Zip
Kodi
and millions of other projects which are either one way or another used in systems and products around us in our homes and day to day lives
Suitors Of Open Source
As with any other collaborative ecosystem, open-source has the following suitors in the playground,
Creators
Originators of the project idea, initial developers and designers, people who set the project’s vision and goals
Collaborators
Contribute code, documentation, and design, review and test contributions from others, Participate in discussions and planning, provide feedback and suggestions
Users or Beneficiaries
Utilize the open-source project in their own work or products and request features, share feedback on usability and functionality
Advocates
Promote the project through blogs, social media, and talks, Educate others about the project and its benefits, Help grow the community by attracting new contributors and users
Sponsors
Provide financial support or resources, Fund development, events, and infrastructure, Offer grants, bounties, or donations
The Freedom
The main attraction of open-source is the freedom for individuals or groups to come together and solve problems without restrictions from regulations and organizational bureaucracy.
The open-source project governing licenses specifically define this through 'No Liability' and 'No Warranty' clauses. These clauses allow collaborators to pioneer their vision rather than be bound and restricted by their environment.
The core characteristics that made open-source successful so far are,
The Personal Interest or Passion
Open-source project begins by an individual’s or group of individual’s personal interest
The Freedom
Open-source project sustains when the developers have the autonomy and empowerment to define the future vision of it
The Transparency
Open-source project is widely adapted due to the transparency nature of it’s working mechanisms.
Cost Effectiveness
It is ‘free’ as in Money
The Collaborative Community
People invest their time and energy without pay out of passion and personal interest
The Dilemma
Mission Creep/Drift
As the open-source project grows in popularity and adaptation, sometimes the first casualty is the original vision of the project. The collaborators, rather than working toward the initial founding vision, end up catering to the needs and wants of users and beneficiaries.
The original aspect of personal interest and personal itch takes a back seat, and the project rolls into an informal sphere of organized bureaucracy governed by feature requests dictated by the beneficiaries of the project.
The desire to appeal to a broader audience takes the front seat, while the original vision silently succumbs in the back.
Regulatory Burden
Recently, the pressure of compliance to regulations has taken the open-source projects by storm, limiting the ability or diverting the focus for innovation and experimentation in this sphere one way or another.
The Reputation Burden
Finally, in response to the rise in supply chain attacks, we have proposed implementing reputation scores for open-source projects to classify and penalize 'good' and 'bad' projects informally.
Although commendable and noble intention, one long-term impact of such scores is that projects may focus more on attaining good scores than on solving the primary problem or advancing towards their vision.
The Riddle
We are strong believers that ensuring security and safety in the open-source software supply chain is crucial. However, the riddle for us is,
How should the scales balance among 'Freedom & Innovation ' vs 'Regulation and Reputation' ?
who among the open-source suitors shall be tasked with balancing it?
The Answer
As for those who are waiting patiently for the answer to the 'Three Suitors' riddle above, according to King Vikramaditya,
The one who brought her to life with a spell is her creator, equivalent to her father. The one who carried her bones to the Ganges is equivalent to her son. But the one who laid himself on her ashes out of love could be her husband
References
[1] An Interview With Linus Trovald