I’m currently writing a book about (what is now called) Collaborative Product Design – the methodology I designed to facilitate ‘users’ to design their own software. Scott Nesbitt is helping me produce the book as are Raewyn Whyte, Julien Taquet and Pepper Curry.
Scott asked me to write an intro to the book… so, here is my first attempt. I’d appreciate feedback!
Open Source is broken. Or, more precisely, it is partially broken. It works for solving problems developers have: it doesn't generally work so well for fixing problems 'users' have. The part that works is where the famous 'itch to scratch' model works. If you are a developer, and you see a problem you have as a developer, then you are in a good position to solve it. Commonly, this model has been thought to work because the developer has the necessary skills to solve the problem, but that is not the critical issue. The critical issue is that, in these cases, the developer is the user, and as such, understands the problem in depth. They own the problem, and hence the solution. This is where Open Source excels. This is why we have such a proliferation of open source 'under the hood' libraries and tools for developers such that it is near impossible to be a developer these days and not use Open Source tools. The itch to scratch model has worked for developers solving the problems they and, consequently, other developers, have. But outside of developers solving their own problems, open source has largely failed. There are very few convincing 'user-facing' softwares that can beat out their proprietary rivals on approach, utility, and usability. This is because Open Source works [mostly, only] when people are 'fixing their own problems' (itching their own scratch). This is the fundamental strength of open source. The model's strength is NOT developers solving other's problems, but people solving their own problems. When developers are the single solution provider for 'other peoples problems,' the model fails. What are we to do with this? The answer is simple but has profound impacts for open source culture. The answer is to always have the 'people with the problem' at the heart of the open source project. The answer is simple, the implications are huge. They include the need to diversify participation in open source projects, to push the developer out of the central role they currently occupy in open source projects as a single solution provider, to tear down technical meritocracy as the single determinant of value, and to experiment with new models of open source cultures.
