[OSGeo-Discuss] Open Source Lurkers

[Bill Thoen]

I've been a moderator for a commercial desktop mapping forum for more 
than 10 years and this behavior is quite common. I think it has more to 
do with how people adapt to a social network than it has to do with 
anything unique in the Open Source world. Like Chris mentioned, the 
majority of subscribers prefer to lurk below the public visibility 
horizon in a way that resembles an iceberg where only the tip remains 
above the waterline while the majority of its bulk lurks below.

People lurk for many of the reasons you suggest, but I think the most 
common one is that they don't feel expert enough to contribute anything 
useful to a thread, and the risk of saying something "stoopid" --in 
public... and worse, thus revealing to their GIS/mapping peers the depth 
of their ignorance-- is just too embarrassing to contemplate. Especially 
when compared with the perceived safety of remaining anonymous in the 
shadows where they can drink in new knowledge like free beer while also 
being entertained by the interplay of the forum's regularly featured 
fools and sages.

If we assume that Maslow was right about what motivates people 
(self-interest) then lurking in an open source community and not 
participating is exactly the wrong thing to do. If your business depends 
on some FOSS tool, then it's in your self-interest to expand the 
environment in which it operates as much as possible. Because if what 
you sell depends on tools like OpenJUMP, you want OpenJUMP well 
supported with a lively user group, a good supply of free data, 
technologically competitive, and actively being developed. This is the 
key to making money out of bits instead of atoms. If you sell services, 
give away the software and the infrastructure of the environment it runs 
in. This expands the market for your services and since the tools are 
free, the more people who download them the bigger your market share 
gets. If you sell software, give away services that leverage it. But if 
you lurk and don't contribute to its development or the development of 
the environment in which it operates, then you're sort of stepping on 
your own air hose.

- Bill Thoen


Landon Blake wrote:
>
> I would like to get some comments on a phenomenon I have discovered 
> among the OpenJUMP community. I know for sure of one (1) company that 
> maintains a separate fork of OpenJUMP, but which monitors our mailing 
> list and likely grabs patches form our source code repository. They 
> never participate in the forums or make known their use of OpenJUMP in 
> any other public manner.
>
> I think there is at least one other company that does this.
>
> I only learn of these companies when I am contacted by private e-mail 
> to work for them on OpenJUMP development, usually by some headhunter. 
> I actually did a little work for one of these companies (which was not 
> a great experience, but that is another story) and I was surprised at 
> how important OpenJUMP was to their operation. They even distributed 
> it to their customers.
>
> I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why this company wouldn’t 
> take a more active role in supporting the OpenJUMP community. I’m not 
> necessarily talking about money here, but about writing documentation, 
> contributing their own patches, or answering questions on the mailing 
> lists. Our community is very informal and open, and an organization 
> could likely have a large influence on the direction the program took 
> with an investment of some resources.
>
> Is OpenJUMP the only community with these open source lurkers? How 
> many of these companies do you think there are? (I’m not talking about 
> one guy who downloads an open source app and uses it. I’m talking 
> about actual companies with more than one employee.)
>
> Why don’t they get more involved? Are they embarrassed? Do they not 
> want their competition to find out about the open source program they 
> are benefiting from? Are they violating the terms of the license and 
> don’t want to get busted? Do they not understand that their 
> involvement is a key part of the program’s survival?
>
> This has become an important question for me recently as the active 
> development of OpenJUMP has slowed. We don’t have any organizations 
> actively participating in development. (Well, maybe one or two, but 
> they have been quiet lately.) I’m the only one working on serious 
> improvements or changes, and not just bug fixes. I would really like 
> to reach out to these lurkers to get them more involved. Ultimately, 
> the survival of the project may depend on it.
>
> What do you think? Send an e-mail to the project list with an 
> invitation to contact me privately about getting more involved? Are 
> these lurkers worth the time?
>
> Landon
>
>
>
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