A common misconception about open source

I lifted this from Markus’ website, even though it’s originally attributed to Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr:

You don?t do good software design by committee. You do it best by having a dictator. From the user?s point of view, you must have a coherent design philosophy, and I don?t see how that could come about from open source software. The person who?s done it best is Steve Jobs, and he?s well-known for being a tyrant.

– Don Norman

Well now that’s an interesting misconception: open source software = democracy. Of course we have to remember that this is just a quote; something in essence always taken out of context.

I have made this mistake though. My first open source software was democratically developed. Well, more accurately, my very impressively sized team spent several months discussing it but I ended up being the only one coding something while all my virtual chefs would tell me where to add ingredients.

I have never made that mistake again. Open source software, to be successful, needs a strong leader, just as closed source software does. I believe that to lead a project to success, you need personality. Not necessarily a good personality, just something that will make people feel that at least the project is going somewhere.

A famous example of open source software that is *not* democracy-based is Linux. Linus Torvalds will not let you add your code to the existing kernel code base without thorough review and he will sometimes decide to reject your code based on ‘political’ reasons. It makes for interesting debates and I can think of at least a few people who went from idolizing the idea they had of Linus to squarely resenting any interaction with him. But it’s only fair: open or closed source, software development needs direction and you have to pick your own priorities: who do you wish to satisfy first? Your users or your developers?