Let’s end all Free Software “projects” quickly!
A “project” is always temporary, in the narrow sense of the term. Some Free Software people use “project” to refer to long lasting initiatives instead. By adopting the more widespread use of the term, Free Software initiatives enhance their ability to reflect upon themselves and to communicate better towards others. Making a distinction between an initiative, projects and products enables a group to speak more clearly about their individual interests and how it leads to successful cooperation. Let us end the misleading use of “project” and get into concluding more Free Software project faster!
When IT people hear about a “project” the majority will understand “A temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product or service”[1]. In other words: A project is only done once, has limited resources and will end sooner or later.
When Karl Fogel writes about “How to Run a Successful Free Software Project”, it is about how to organize a healthy community around creating a specific Free Software product. Fogel’s book is a helpful resource, and a good example why an improvement in the Free Software community is needed.
It matters because this incompatible use of “project” jams understanding of what Free Software is about. For example the vast majority of trained IT people will get the wrong idea.
Look at this from a Free Software angle: Personally I have ended numerous Free Software projects! Each one of them had goals, associated resources and constraints. They were ended, most of them being successful. Maybe a project stretched the time-frame or the resources, was being extended or delayed.
But in the end they are done, gone, over. And this is really good! If a project is concluded, I hold its results in my hand. When it went well I have achieved my aims and some more. The faster a project ends successfully, the better.
Now compare this to a software component that is developed in the open and published under a Free Software license. Who makes it? How is it developed? Do I want to end this process as fast as I can? No, of course not! Fresh ideas come in, new defects or challenges come up and different people appear. They form a collaborating community within individuals have their own interests, while contributing to a common vision. The finest communities produce, design and maintain world class Free Software products – as an ongoing activity. Ideally a community lives for decades and ever after. As long there are active people, there are resources. As long as there is still a feature to add or a new platform or better tool to port to, there are new goals. It just feels wrong to call such long-living initiatives “projects”!
A few Free Software people tend to use this term for their initiative and if I want to talk to them about a project, there is an understanding gap to bridge. And when thinking about single individuals and companies and how their agendas relate to your community, it is getting in the way that there is no better distinction.
It helped me to get a clearer view by speaking of an “initiative” in case of an ongoing, possibly never-ending activity that produces and promotes Free Software products. “Initiative” points to the people that are contributing to a common vision. I contrast this to “community”, where I include a larger group of stakeholders. Regular and conscious users are community to me. Because being less active than a contributor I do not consider them part of the initiative. Each product has its own community, maybe even several ones like a users-, a translators-, a modelers- or a developers-(sub)community. So what does an initiative do? Often it will produce a software product. Sometimes its activities will bear documents or other results. In any case it can be called “result”, “product” or just by its name. For example when you have “abc-2.11.tar.xz”, it can be called “Abc” or “Product Abc”.
When new users climb up the participant pyramid[2] of my initiative, they will think of: How can I help best? What are the goals? If they know that the initiative is long running and does releases, they can at once help to plan the next one. Their expectations will align faster with others, which is important to keep contributors motivated.
The KDE re-branding effort was born out of similar thoughts. As I would say: KDE is the initiative, and KDE Platform and Plasma are some of their products. KDE will be able to explain themselves and their products better to a wider audience. This is very good for new applications based on the KDE Platform, often done by a KDE group, but able to run without Plasma, the KDE Desktop. I believe in this re-branding, because it supports illustrating that KDE products fly well beyond the old operating system borders.
Try it! Rethink your actions when contributing to Free Software (products). Often you will be contributing to a lasting initiative not a (limited) project. Free Software is here to stay, prepare your mind for this situation. 
- ↑This is the definition of the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).The UK Association of Project Management’s is similar: “A unique, transient endeavour undertaken to achieve a desired outcome.” from www.apm.org.uk/content/project,retrieved 2011-09-22Essentially the same as the understanding of the International Project Management Association (IPMA) as given in the system development model V-Model XT: “a singular entirety of coordinated activities with specific starting and end points that are carried out by a person or organization with the aim to achieve specific targets with regard to schedule, cost and performance.”section 8.3 Glossary, Entry “Project” of the V-Modell XT 1.3 EN, retrieved 2012-01-19
- ↑ Participates Pyramid from section 4.1 of Sustainable Free Software: From project to permanent activity, using the example Gpg4win
Comments
So what about the GNU project?
Has it come to an end now that “a sufficient body of free software”¹ has been written to allow those who can to run an absolutely free operating system?
Good question – Hugo! I believe GNU turned into an initiative at some point, to the frustration of some GNU Hackers itself. While the fight for freedom is a neverending one, I believe the GNU Project should have celebrated its successful end some years ago!
maybe once the Hurd is ready
Dear Bernhard,
I am not convinced
* I agree that using “initiative” instead of “project” might be beneficial when referring to groups of people with like mindsets, goals (and their structures) ["KDE Initiative", "Mozilla Initiative"...]
* I am very opposed to using the term “product” to refer to pieces of Free Software or Free Software releases. Beside the issue of whether something immaterial should be considered a product at all — or if it this already transfers connotations from the material world (e.g. scarcity) that we would rather not have in a free as in freedom society — it is especially *not suited* for most pieces of Free Software in my opinion.
Let me elaborate that point:
(1) First and foremost a product — in its most commonly used intention¹ — is something that is produced by one entity to be consumed by another entity.
(2) Usually the producing entity consists of some sort of hierarchy where the means of the production are not owned by those who produce the product and those producing the product do this in return for wage [the reason is material need] and not because they just feel like it [the reason being freedom]
(3) In our economic system consumption of the product (satisfying some need) isn’t even the primary goal of production, but realising a profit.
(4) Conversely a need for a different/other product does not imply its production, the interaction between producer and consumer is limited to market mechanisms.
How does this apply to making Free Software? Not at all, in my opinion:
(1) results in an alienation and a general split between the producer and the consumer. While we acknowledge that not all users are developers, we should oppose a general division and promote projects that are open for participation. Also we should promote computer literacy and programming skills, so that users are emancipated from their roles as passive consumers.
Being able to fork a project, if it does not allow proper participation, is something that allows any user to become the new “producer” (at least in theory)
(2) results in an alienation of the producer from the product and the producing environment. While Free Software companies play an important role for Free Software today and this mechanism applies there in general, I think it is important to highlight that a lot of Free Software is created out of pure freedom and that many Free Software projects (or “initiatives”) are voluntary associations of people, often with democratic structures. And that these are absolutely crucial to the Free Software community.
(3) Because, as described in (2), many pieces of Free Software are not developed for profit, the connection between a work’s intent and peoples’ actual needs is much closer. I know that this a difficult point, because, so long as only a minority in our society can write software, Free Software especially will be tailored to the needs of this minority, which might not be the needs of the general population². However, if we maintain the goal that all people should have a more profound understanding of their computer and many more people should have some software writing skills, this is at least a road to more freedom and better software (better as in satisfying the needs of more people). Also we do not have to create artificial needs and hypes; and we will not be part of introducing and marketing anti-features, so we are closer to peoples’ actual interests than for-profit proprietary software.
(4) results in an alienation between the consumer and the product. E.g. I have the freedom of choice between different products, but I might not be able to afford some or might not be satisfied with any of the available alternatives. I do not have any democratic possibilities to influence production and not the freedom to start production myself, unless I am extremely wealthy.
This does not apply to Free Software at all, since nearly all user-accessible Free Software is free as in free beer, I have true free choice. Also the amount of users is not as relevant to most projects, not-for-profit projects don’t compete, because they don’t need to be successful; market mechanisms do not apply the way they do elsewhere. Ultimately I have insight into the development of Free Software and the freedom to participate in or fork projects, if I want to change something. The latter can be more difficult in practice (especially under the aforementioned conditions, where programming is still not widely taught and exercised), but is still beyond comparison with material world lack of freedom.
I conclude that using the term “product” is contrary to the political message we want to convey and will cause more confusion than the word “project”, with developers, users, (Free Software-) company owners and those in between.
What are your thoughts on this?
Regards,
Hannes
¹ synonyms according to wiktionary: merchandise, wares, goods
² something we see quite often in the Free Software world
Dear Hannes,
thanks for sharing your thoughts on the matter. There are quite a few points in your comment that I tend to disagree with; some I would agree with. Overall I believe many of them are not relevant to what I am suggesting:
a) Use separate terms for the people, the results they create and temporary concerted actions.
B) Geting compatible with mainstream terminology to bring in more people.
I just claim that “software product” is widely understood in information technology as describing a piece of software. Also “a product” is the result of an aimed activity in project management. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_product_management#Software_products and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_(business) .
Your aim may be to highlight specific differences between proprietary software and Free Software products, and having better terms even helps you to do so. An alternative to say “the Alphabet Initative produced product is ABC” is “the Alphabet initative released their ABC software” or “ABC from the Alphabet Initiative was published”.
Best Regards,
Bernhard
I see your point that “project” isn’t a really good word for something that goes on indefinitely, but “initiative” is even worse. An initiative is an event. It’s momentary. Somebody takes an initiative and initiates something, a project perhaps. The project then goes on for some time, but the initiative that initiated the project lies in the past.
So what’s a good word for something that can continue for decades? I can think of “process” and “program”, but those words already have other meanings in the software field. You used “activity” a couple times in your post. Might that word be usable?
Having an even better word for a long lasting activity would be nice, I agree. “initative” was the best I came up with so far. Other ideas welcome.
I like “initative” better than “activity” because “activity” often does appear in project management speak already. By using “initative” I had in mind the following meanings: a) The German noun “Buergerinitative”, which means a group of citizens following a common goal, as opposed to a government or company group. Often there was an inital impluse or a specific itch to scratch which motivated them to start such a group, but it can exist indefinitly. Often it is a grassroots organisation. b) the meaning “ability to act on one’s own”, see http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/initiative#Noun . So to say: the group of people “holding the initiative” within the community of a specific software “product”.
Also I aimed for avoiding to call it the group of “active developers” as it takes some sense of belong to the group, at least there should be. And it goes way beyond coding. It is a group of people with common goals, people who are actively pursuing these goals out of their ability to do so on their own. To me that is an initative!
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