[OSGeo-Discuss] Return on Equity

[Gavin Fleming]

An excellent book that tells the FOSS story and explores its value
propositions and business models is 'The Success of Open Source' by
Steven Weber, who writes from the perspective of an 'outsider', a
political scientist.

Gavin

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of P Kishor
Sent: 29 August 2007 05:40 AM
To: OSGeo Discussions
Subject: Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Return on Equity

Very well written Howard. In tribute to your writing, I will promptly
snitch some ideas from your writing below.

I have been tackling this issue of "selling" open geospatial,
particularly to agencies for whom generally financial cost is a
non-issue. I try to tell them that in most "classes" open source is
the best-of-class technologies no matter what yardstick you measure it
against. The defining characteristic, of course, is the
mob-intelligence quotient. But how do you measure the quality of
knowledge produced collaboratively? There is no gross salary number
that can be divided by the staff hours. There is no cash-flow, free
money, ROE of the contributors... there is return on investment that
can be measured, but usually only after the investment. SLOCs (source
line of code) is one measure, but in the world which strives to write
as few lines of code to accomplish a task, usually a measure of better
software, fewer SLOC would actually be a better indicator of the
quality.

If someone can condense the qualities of open source to a sound-bite,
that would be great, but I have been unable to do so. I find that
there is a story behind open source, and that story takes time
telling, particularly to those who are not familiar with it. For that,
one needs to cultivate relationships so folks can become willing to
give their time to listen to the story.

I have been shaping my story along the lines of technology, law, and
culture. Open source, unlike other forms of knowledge-production, has
innovated along all of these three axes... novel forms of technologies
created through novel forms of technologies, innovative legal regimes
that are continuously evolving participatively, and a culture, an
ethos, that fundamentally believes that sharing is better than not
sharing.


On 8/29/07, Howard Butler <hobu.inc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Open source software works because people acting in their own self
> interest have the auxiliary benefit of helping everyone in the
> project.  Report your pet bug, file a patch, add a new feature -- all
> of these things immediately help you, but ultimately help the
> project.  This activity also imparts tangential benefits that are
> very hard to quantify but can be clearly important like personal
> visibility, credibility, and status.
>
> For an open source software project to be viable as a development
> entity, it must be able to bestow these benefits to its individual
> contributors.  Everyone's reasons may be different, but people must
> be able to receive a return on their sweat equity that they put in or
> volunteer effort will not continue to flow into a project.  I think
> that recognition and facilitation of this symbiosis is a blind spot
> for OSGeo. We should be striving to ensure that it can take place
> because we are a volunteer organization whose members have common
goals.
>
> Wait a second?  Isn't OSGeo an Autodesk thing with lots of money?
> How is it a "volunteer organization?"
>
> Most of OSGeo's measurable successes to date have been volunteer
> efforts, not primarily financially-backed ones.  The OSGeo Journal
> effort, Google Summer of Code administration, the Geodata committee's
> efforts, and even much of our system administration to keep the
> lights on for developer tools like Subversion/Trac have been
> volunteer enterprises (please help flesh out this list, these are
> only those I am most aware of, I know there have been many others).
> However, I think financial resources, both in the capacity to
> generate sponsorship money and the ability to spend it wisely, are
> what provides the opportunity to set OSGeo apart and provide the
> volunteerism leverage.
>
> When Autodesk came in and helped bootstrap OSGeo, it was fairly clear
> that our financial existence would not be an indefinite expenditure
> -- we would have to exist on our own.  Additionally, to meet 503c3
> requirements, we cannot have a situation where we have a majority
> benefactor as we do now.  We're almost two years down the road into
> bootstrapping, and our majority benefactor situation has budged very
> little.  As far as I know, our only significant incoming sponsorship
> dollars beyond Autodesk are the "targeted development" vehicles like
> those that pay for a permanent maintainer for GDAL.
>
> Another aspect is the sweat equity that has been poured into OSGeo
> over the past year and a half.  Committee members, board members, and
> of course, especially Frank Warmerdam have been spending a lot of
> time bootstrapping.  The opportunity cost of this effort has not been
> insignificant.  I think it is time we take a step back and attempt to
> quantify what the return on that investment has been.  What has the
> existence of OSGeo enabled that could not have happened otherwise?
>
> With some new blood and hopefully new enthusiasm coming to the OSGeo
> board, I would like to propose that we challenge the assumptions of
> the value proposition of OSGeo in an attempt to focus our efforts.
> Other than some minor benefits (or major pains, hah!) of shared
> infrastructure (Subversion/Trac) and the arguably beneficial
> bureaucratic incubation process, what value does OSGeo provide for
> member projects?  What is the elevator pitch, one-sentence value
> proposition to a potential sponsor of OSGeo?  What is the concrete
> return on sweat equity that a volunteer within OSGeo can expect to
> earn?  We need to think about structural issues OSGeo might have that
> hinder our ability to model the Open Source symbiosis described in
> the first paragraphs of this email for those with financial resources
> or those willing to swing an ax or two.
>
> Howard
>



-- 
Puneet Kishor
http://punkish.eidesis.org/
Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/
Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo)
http://www.osgeo.org/
Summer 2007 S&T Policy Fellow, The National Academies
http://www.nas.edu/
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