This is a review of a report, published by the Linux Foundation Research Division, titled "Enabling Global Collaboration—How Open Source Leaders Are Facing the Challenge of Fragmentation."
The main contents of this report include:
- Fragmentation in open source code development, its pros and cons
- The internationalization of open source, and how project leaders can overcome potential barriers to participation in open source communities
- The impact of technonationalism on open source collaboration, and strategies to reduce the risk of regional fragmentation
- The current state of open source governance , and how to increase collaboration among open source foundations
- key findings and recommendations
This report comes against the backdrop of the current global environment in which the open source community is experiencing some fragmentation, be it technical, commercial, or political. These splits could have implications for the open source community and the digital economy. That's why the Linux Foundation's research arm has released this report to explore these fragmentations and how they can be overcome through global cooperation.
In fact, in the report, the types and differences of splits were not very clear, so I reclassified them and mainly divided them into: technical splits, commercial splits, and political splits. The following analyzes the characteristics of the three splits and their causes The main reason for the split.
Code forking (fork): This is the most common split in the open source world. When developers have different views on the technical direction of project development, they may choose to fork the code base and create a new project. This fragmentation can lead to the dispersion of resources, but it can also lead to innovation and disruption.
Competing platforms or standards: There may be multiple competing platforms or standards in the open source community. For example, Linux and BSD are two competing open source operating systems. This fragmentation can lead to developers and users needing to choose between multiple platforms or standards, adding to the complexity. But in the long run, mutual learning and reference is also a phenomenon that often occurs in technological competition.
Differences in technology selection: Open source projects may split due to differences in technology selection. For example, one project might choose to use Python as the primary programming language, while another might choose to use Java. This split can lead to hard trade-offs for developers, but is part of the diversity of the open source ecosystem.
Commercial competition or chasing profits: Commercial companies may choose to split open source projects due to competition, in order to better control the development direction of the project, or to obtain more market share, or to obtain profits by providing proprietary value-added services or products .
Legal and compliance issues: Commercial companies may choose to split open source projects due to legal and compliance issues, for example, they may need to comply with specific laws and regulations, or meet specific compliance requirements.
Market positioning: Commercial companies may choose to split open source projects because of market positioning considerations, for example, they may want to meet the needs of a specific market or customer group.
Disagreement within the community : Not even because of technical reasons, but because of different ideas, poor communication, or even just some misunderstandings or prejudices, which lead to irreconcilable contradictions within the community, and then split. Such divisions often lead to the gradual decline of a community, or even two separate communities.
Techno-nationalism: Such a split could come from two directions. One situation is: because technology A is not our country, we need to develop a similar technology A'. Another situation is: Because those countries need our A technology, but we can't give them, so they can only develop a similar A' technology by themselves.
Technological isolationism, or even technological weaponization: This is an upgraded version of technological nationalism, or a country dares to build a car behind closed doors, or countries adopt stronger protection measures, restrict the distribution of open source code, and create one or more information/technology islands .
In fact, technical splits and commercial splits are the norm in the open source community, which can neither be prevented nor need to be prevented. But: Political division is a very bad thing. We need to find a way to stop it. This requires the joint efforts of the entire open source community, especially open source leaders.
Build trust: The open source community needs to build trust in the software development process. For example, a reputation framework with better peer review and third-party audits could be created. Such a trust network should be transparent and extendable to all open source communities. We should go back to the original hacker ethics: just judge people based on their open source contributions, not based on his nationality, ethnicity, identity and status.
Insist on neutrality: Positioning open source foundations and projects as impartial players is critical to creating a neutral home for global cooperation. Creating neutral, inclusive, and transparent collaborative structures not only expands participation, but also reduces incentives for ecosystem players to create parallel efforts.
Open and fair system: As long as the system is open and fair, everyone can participate. This ensures that all participants can cooperate on an equal footing, no matter where they are from or what their political affiliation is.
Transparent open source agreement: Open source agreement should be open and transparent, so that all participants can clearly understand the content of the agreement. This can help prevent misunderstandings and conflicts, and can also increase participants' trust in the protocol.
Promote the concept of "the world's open source people are one family": the open source community should be global and not restricted by geographical, cultural, political and other factors. Members of an open source community should work together, share knowledge, and solve problems together to achieve global collaboration and innovation. The open source community should welcome and embrace all people, no matter where they come from or what their background is. Diversity and inclusion are important values of the open source community and an important means of preventing political division.
The idea of Datong in traditional China is derived from "Book of Rites Datong", which describes an ideal state of society in which people live in harmony, there is no war and conflict, resources are distributed fairly, and everyone enjoys equal rights and opportunities. Datong thought emphasizes harmony, fairness, equality and sharing, which are the basis for building a harmonious society.
In the world of Datong, people no longer center on personal self-interest, but on public interest. People no longer compete for resources, but share them. People no longer exclude others, but accept and tolerate others. This is a world without inequality, without war and conflict, without oppression and exploitation.
Maybe such a world will be realized a long time later, but: in the digital world, in the open source world, we can really realize this dream.
In the digital Datong world, information and knowledge can flow freely, people can communicate and cooperate through the network, and resources can be distributed fairly globally. People can access and share information and knowledge anytime and anywhere. No matter where people live, they can enjoy equal opportunities and rights. The digital Datong world emphasizes openness, sharing, collaboration and fairness, which are the foundations for building a digital Datong world.
Perhaps, we open source people can realize the traditional idea of Datong in the digital world and build an open, shared, collaborative and fair digital world.
In the "[Open Source Manifesto](https://github.com/kaiyuanshe/Open-Source-Fans-Manifesto)" released by Kaiyuanshe, we said: "In the face of a rapidly changing, rapidly falling, and possibly changing In a world that is being torn apart, we should promote the spirit of open source, gather everyone's power for good, gather everyone's wisdom for good, open collaboration, mutual benefit and win-win, and contribute to making this world a better place!"
In the manifesto, we also issued the following action proposals:
Advocate widely
We should work harder to spread the concept and spirit of open source to the public, so that more people can accept the concept of open source and become fellows of open source. We should also promote open source practices in fields other than open source software and hardware—not only open source code, but also open data, and open up all knowledge and experience that can help the world become better, so that more industries, More groups embrace open source and become beneficiaries of open collaboration.
Help each other
We should help more open source projects to thrive and achieve perfection; we should help more open source communities to unite and help each other and collaborate together. We should prevent the meaning of open source from being misused or misinterpreted. We should stop fragmentation, oppose artificial barriers, oppose any "pseudo-open source" with discriminatory clauses attached, and ensure that open source remains a cause that benefits the world.
Act now (Just do it)
Everyone can participate in open source, not only big names can do it. We can start by correcting spelling, translating or writing documents, debugging code, submitting code, reviewing code, volunteering to support open source activities, and even giving evangelistic talks to attract more friends to join us.
Today, we are very excited to see "Helping Global Collaboration - How Open Source Leaders Facing the Challenge of Fragmentation" released by the Linux Foundation, because everyone thinks of being together again! So, let's act!
Author丨Zhuang BiaoweiEdited
丨Shao Kejia
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Introduction to Kaiyuanshe
Founded in 2014, Kaiyuan Society is composed of individual members who voluntarily contribute to the cause of open source. It is formed according to the principle of "contribution, consensus, and co-governance". It has always maintained the characteristics of vendor neutrality, public welfare, and non-profit. International integration, community development, project incubation" is an open source community federation with the mission. Kaiyuanshe actively cooperates closely with communities, enterprises and government-related units that support open source. With the vision of "Based in China and Contributing to the World", it aims to create a healthy and sustainable open source ecosystem and promote China's open source community to become an active force in the global open source system. Participation and Contributors.
In 2017, Kaiyuanshe was transformed into an organization composed entirely of individual members, operating with reference to the governance model of top international open source foundations such as ASF. In the past nine years, it has connected tens of thousands of open source people, gathered thousands of community members and volunteers, hundreds of lecturers at home and abroad, and cooperated with hundreds of sponsors, media, and community partners.
