Santa Cruz, CA
For the last decade Karsten has been teaching and living the open source way. As a member of Red Hat's premier community leadership team, he helps with various community activities in the Fedora Project and other projects Red Hat is involved in. As a 15 year IT industry veteran, Karsten has worked most sides of common business equations as an IS manager, professional services consultant, technical writer, and developer advocate.
Karsten lives in his hometown of Santa Cruz, CA with his wife and two daughters on their small urban farm, Fairy-Tale Farm, where they focus on growing their own food and nurturing sustainable community living.
Authored Comments
In general, when writing or giving talks about free and open source software methods, I regularly reference the scientific method as the parent to how and why we do FLOSS the way we do. I haven't specifically referenced the Royal Society but that makes a great story especially as we hit the that anniversary.
There are actually at least two important aspects to the open source way that are historically derived. The scientific method, including the precept of peer review via the Royal Society, is the youngest of the two. The community methods (aka <a href="http://www.theopensourceway.org/wiki/Communities_of_practice">communities of practice</a>) are at least as old as humanity's first tribal behaviors.
This discussion is related to and reminds of the reasoning behind why people have long justified why organizations should choose to work in free and open source software (FOSS) projects.
"It's the right thing, the right way," as if that were enough, without further reasoning. When someone convinces you in the middle of the woods to take this path or that path, it's not because it is an ephemeral feeling. One clearly follows the river up and down, and water runs toward the sea. If you want to get to civilization, follow the water down.
This is why I used the provocative sub-title "The scientific facts about the open source way" for my <a href="http://iquaid.org/2010/02/24/first-keynote-crush-or-trash-at-scale8x/">keynote at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) 8x last weekend</a>. And some folks told me they were interested in seeing the data - charts and graphs. The problem is, those are the wrong metrics for the situation. You don't check to see if someone is healthy by dissecting and weighing the pieces. Even if it does make for pretty graphs.
We've too often taken an easy, feel-good way out as a reason for freeing content and code. What the <a href="https://www.theopensourceway.org/wiki/Communities_of_practice">science behind communities of practice</a> tells us is, there is a certain type of communal learning environment that can be recognized back in history. It has certain patterns and constructs. If you have a group that can match to the patterns and constructs, it is most likely healthy and productive.
The same science tells us how effective these communities are. Story after story of businesses being positively effected by internal communities of practice, from book after book on related subjects. It's pretty overwhelming evidence.
The challenge is when people have already put a mental box around a concept because they consider it to be from a radical viewpoint unrelated to their world. It doesn't help that the word "free" in English has unrelated meanings that cause confusion, yet we keep using the word.