More on OpenDS...and Sun's interesting views on what open source are

The other day I wrote on Sun's dirty tricks re: the apparently not quite open source OpenDS. Sun's new "OpenDS Community Leader" Ludovic Poitou has posted a response that more or less calls all the developers Sun let go -- for their not being French* and then subsequently forced out of the project -- liars. *(this is the only explanation that has been given up until now). Following this I posted that I didn't really feel the response was all that satisfying. To which the Distinguished Engineer posted a challenge to suggest a response that would be satisfying. I replied:

The license is not enough to create open source. Your governance model is de facto shared-source if not de jure.

The obvious:

• 1. Restore all developers who were forced to resign
• 2. Restore the governance to the state prior to your recent reversion
• 3. Discuss the proposed changes with the full community.
• 4. Management apology for this behavior and a promise that it will not happen again.

The ideal:

• 5. Rehire those developers who want to come back in their previous positions.

Not surprisingly he didn't like that response and since Sun has done something dirty they'd like to "move on" (read: get away with it and admit no wrong doing, free to do it again in the future). So he reiterated that all the former Sun employees whom myself and others had come to respect technically and believe had a sincere desire to do REAL open source were liars who had dirtily sneakily made Sun's project open.

Shockingly one of the other OpenDS developers, Trey Drake (who was fired and then pushed off the project), didn't like being called a liar and evildoer and clarified:

Enough. I have attempted to stay out of the fray as I find the whole thing embarrassing as I initiated the governance change. As the previous OpenDS Community Leader I was deeply involved in the community and was the primary advocate for making OpenDS and the broader Identity Management community more open, transparent and independent. The change in question was the result of months of discussion amongst the owners, myself, and the eventual Identity Management community owners (which included me). To say that it wasn't "Sun approved" is incorrect. There were no less than 2 Sun officers (Directors), an engineering manager, a principal engineer, and the previous Sun appointed Project Lead involved in the change. As an advocate for the community, I wanted to take these changes further to ensure that there were non Sun users on the ownership board and explicitly state that community participants represent themselves not their employer. The adopted change was a first, conservative step in that direction. The idea behind this and other changes was inspired by Jonathan's vision for Sun's growth and credibility in the OSS community. The "doacrcy" is nothing new and based on very successful OSS communities; i.e., Apache, Eclipse...

As for the broader community - I personally bounced the change off a select group of OpenDS users, but not the entire community on the public mailing list. In hindsight, I suppose this change should have been sent out over the public alias, but to what end? Would anyone, in the OpenDS user community have disagreed with a freer, more open project? The change was not swept under the rug nor done in secret. Ludo, you and others may have "just discovered" the change because you were not involved in the OpenDS project until shortly before we were laid off. Please don't attempt to cast a negative shadow over our previous efforts as OSS advocates.

From the preceding thread and claims by Neil, it appears that Sun requires ultimate authority over projects it deems critical to their success. There are many java.net projects initiated and entirely staffed by Sun employees with weaker and, in fact, no governance whatsoever. Current Sun employees may claim that they didn't see nor approve the change and that may be a true statement. It is also true that there was no clear need to consult these employees on the change. So, what's your point?

Lastly, I haven't seen any public discussion or legitimate reasoning for reverting back to the post April governance. Reasoning that "we didn't approve" and hence this is a correction implies there was a previous wrong. You have chosen to change the governance as you see fit. As the only project owners you have that right, but don't discredit the previous leadership and claim the moral high ground in doing so.

I do think that Trey made some mistakes here. The changes should have been vetted publicly. It isn't that you agree or disagree -- and he's right -- it is hard to imagine anyone in open source disagreeing with more openness (though it does happen). However it isn't that you agree or disagree. It is that you showed everyone the respect for their input. Do that enough and you get an open source project. If you don't, you get a shared source project. Sun is demonstrating this very clearly now. Trey breeched some etiquette, not more. Sun burned the house down. It isn't the same thing.

After 1.0 we'll probably migrate away from OpenDS. It makes me sad though, it is a technically excellent but dysfunctional non-open source project. I was duped. I thought that so long as the OpenDS developers were sincere about the desire to do this as real OSS that the details would work themselves out. I didn't anticipate just how much control Sun intends to exhibit. My imagination doesn't allow me to see the long term benefits for Sun to exhibit this much control and simultaneous pretend that it is open source. I think they'd be better off just keeping it proprietary or shared source and giving up the pretense and headache if they don't give a damn what anyone else thinks unless they immediately agree with Sun. If you don't get to vote with your hands, vote with your feet.

Update: Simon Phipps who is kind of a PR Sock-puppet for Sun's open source misadventures, has commented. Basically whenever Sun gets caught with their hands in the cookie jar they get Simon to act as a "voice of reason" and try and convince people it is okay. Simon views himself as a "man on the inside" but in reality rarely reads from a different script. Oddly he's "still looking into it" but is PERFECTLY voiced in Sun's talking points...lame as they are. What is good for Sun (in their shortsided view) is good for the community!

Another Update: Thanks to Ken Coar for mentioning this excellent summation of how Sun often misses when it tries to grok open source.

Yet another Update: They are in full fire control and have either shutdown the list archive or have put me in "a sandbox". I can't tell which. It was BEFORE this blog post too. Meaning this message looks like I was just peachy with regards to if you're not watching carefully. Since they're only interested in feedback from those that auto-agree with them, I think I'll vote with my feet. I encourage you to look very dubiously on Sun's "open source" projects as even if the developers are great nice guys who really believe and "get it"...they work under the sword of Damocles and it doesn't matter what they say/think/do.

More coverage: LinuxWorld, and Neil's followup to Simon's talking points (which seem to have been written mainly by Sun's HR). So Sun is going to set up a central governance committee for all of Sun's projects for the sake of "consistency". They have the right to do this... it is there code. It just isn't open source...where consistency is of course not exactly job #1. ;-) BTW my post was swallowed too. After Trey told more of the story Sun started moderating the list. I'm sure a "technical issue" will be discovered after the media coverage dies down a bit. BTW link to the articles. Google news wants to know ;-). Meanwhile Sun's tactic is to make this look like he said/she said though they don't address the facts just repeat talking points.

Kudos to Dave Johnson..... for not just repeating the talking points...now if the underlying issue of "Does Sun think Open Source == Just licensing" (which was a Simon Phipps aka WebPRmink talking point some years back "development vs distribution")... Governance makes this sound like some committee issue...and distracts us from the meat.

Another post: with a great quote. Note that eduard/o is making sure the Sun talking points are disseminated widely. Again, eduard/o this isn't a 'perception problem' to be fixed with PR, it is a problem with Sun's behavior. If you haven't changed that and are instead running around calling ALL of the former OpenDS developers liars (what did they all get together and start a lying club?) then you're creating an even BIGGER 'perception problem' and your PR effort will double backfire on you. For instance some JBoss developers got tired of a dedicated band of fools who trashed JBoss in every JBoss-related post -- often anonymously and under aliases. Since gracing them with a response would lend such folks credibility, they came up with fake names and addressed them under aliases. Which part do you remember, that JBoss was unfairly stalked and trashed by some individuals with competitive falsehoods or that JBoss "Astroturfed"? Do you think anyone will give a damn about the details of your talking points or that Sun once again has managed to be "not so open" and "controversial". Next, by aggressively repeating talking points that seem overly consistent to be self-authored what do you think will happen in your after career? There were times at JBoss where I couldn't defend what JBoss was doing (for instance the horrible JBoss ON proprietary mess that was a top-down management thing but didn't address what customers REALLY wanted which was an admin console!)... Privately when asked I referred people to JBoss sales and said "I have no opinion to share really" (which most people read between the lines) and kept my mouth shut. I liked Rich and most of the guys on the product but really couldn't stand behind it. There is an art to not being a total tool and keeping your job.

It seems that someone at Sun has made a bad decision on how to handle this project once many of the key members of the community were laid off when Sun's Directory Engineering effort moved to France. I haven't seen any type of response from Sun. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail. Some of the recent halo Sun has is due to it's efforts in open source. A blunder like this could really tarnish what their executives are trying to accomplish.

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