Nonsoftwareoss

Not only software:
cooperative development
models
Carlo Daffara
Conecta srl

quot;Open source software is the most significant all-encompassing
●

and long-term trend that the software industry has seen since
the early 1980squot; [IDC]
The social innovation of collaborative development (one of the
●

possible development models, in the spectrum between
quot;cathedralquot; and quot;bazaarquot; has been considered unable to produce
software secure and of good quality, and in general uncapable of
creating innovative artifacts
quot;quot;The Linux operating system is being developed by an open
●

source process -- a cooperative effort by a loose association of
software developers from all over the world. 'The very nature of
the open source process should rule Linux out of defense
applications,' O'Dowd said. 'The open source process violates
every principle of security. It welcomes everyone to contribute to
Linux. Now that foreign intelligence agencies and terrorists know
that Linux is going to control our most advanced defense
systems, they can use fake identities to contribute subversive
software that will soon be incorporated into our most advanced
defense systems.'quot; (Green Hills Software CEO, Dan O'Dowd)

Not only software: collaborative models in non-software artifacts

quot;The hypothesis that open-source software fosters more
●

creativity is supported by our analysis.
The growing rate, or the number of functions added, was greater
●

in the open-source projects than in the closed-source projects.
This indicates that the open-source approach may be able to
provide more features over time than by using the closed-source
approach. Practitioners interested in capturing market share by
providing additional features should look to the open-source
methodology as a method to achieve this.
In terms of defects, our analysis finds that the changing rate or
●

the functions modified as a percentage of the total functions is
higher in open-source projects than in closed-source projects.
This supports the hypothesis that defects may be found and
●

fixed more quickly in open-source projects than in closed-source
projects and may be an added benefit for using the open-source
development model.quot; [Succi, Paulson, Eberlein. An Empirical
Study of Open-Source and Closed-Source Software Products,
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, V.30/4, april
2004]


The cooperative development model for software in a sense is
●

self-moderated, since code contributions cannot be arbitrary but
should be compilable and not include regressions
quot;working codequot; is in itself a gating barrier
●

Can the collaborative model be used in non-code projects?
●

The first observation is that most (medium and large scale)
●

software projects already contain a large part of non-code
artifacts
For example, localization data, documentation, graphical
●

material like icons and splash screens, pre-designed structures...
For example, in the OpenOffice.org project:
●


QuiFree, 26/10/2007
Non solo software: modelli partecipativi di sviluppo

Some non-code experiments have generated the same kind of
●

criticism originally reserved for open source projects, that
collaborative development cannot reach the same quality or
control of non-OSS ones.
Among the most famous examples, Wikipedia:
●

● more than 2 million english articles

● 356000 italian ones

● more than 8 million articles in more than 100 languages

quot;Using it is like asking questions of a bloke you met in the pub.
●

He might be a nuclear physicist. Or he might be a fruitcakequot;. P.
Valley, The Independent
In december 2005, Nature published a study comparing
●

Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica (in its web edition) on 42
randomly selected scientific articles:


quot;In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of
●

Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of
scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer
review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject
from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article
came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews
were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by
Nature's news team.
Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of
●

important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles
reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also
found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements:
162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.quot; [Nature,
2005]
This demonstrates that in ideal conditions, OSS-like approaches
●

can be used in non-software environments with similar results
In the context of the OpenTTT project we are evaluating the
●

conditions for the applicability of cooperative development
models for non-software projects


We have identified 65 projects, covering fields as different as
●

politics, journalism and physical objects
Most of those projects follow an internal structure quite similar
●

to that of software; for example, all the collaborative writing
projects (like Wikipedia, Amapedia, TripAdvisor, WikiTravel,
RichDex, Wikia) are structured in a modular way, article-
centered, and users add or modify (quot;bug fixingquot;) leaving a visible
trace that can be modified or undone, not different from the use
of software versioning system common in OSS
Consensus is reached through an explicit and public decision;
●

when consenus is not possible, in Wiki-based system the article
is marked as quot;controversialquot; and decision is left to the user (with
both sides visible)
This is different from software, where usually a quot;forkquot; happens
●

and the project takes two separate ways that can later fold back
into a single one (examples of this are the GCC/EGCS fork or
EMACS/XEMACS)


Graphics and multimedia projects tend to have a much limited
●

degree of collaborative work, and artifacts are mainly quot;reusedquot;
(remixed in the case of audio and video) with limited
modifications
Physical objects (through their 3D CAD files) tend to quot;appearquot; at
●

the end of development, and successive modifications are
limited
The exception is open hardware (electronics): the use of
●

descriptive languages like VHDL or Verilog makes the
development process and the tools used similar to pure software
By studying the development patterns of the 65 projects, it is
●

clear that the collaborative platform is the main enabler; the
lack of unifying software is the main difference between activity
areas like software, audio/video, 3D, etc.


An example of design with external,
●

strict constraints:
quot;The MultiMachine is an accurate all-
●

purpose machine tool that can be
used as a metal or wood lathe, end
mill, horizontal mill, drill press, wood
or metal saw or sander, surface
grinder and sheet metal quot;spinnerquot;.
It can be built by a semi-skilled
●

mechanic using just common hand
tools.
For machine construction, electricity
●

can be replaced with quot;elbow greasequot;
and all the necessary material can
come from discarded vehicle parts.
It can be built in a closet size version
●

or one that would weigh 4 or 5 tons.quot;


In the last 2 years several new projects have been created in
●

quite uncommon areas; for example, the Open Source Judaism
project is creating religious books (Haggadah), Politicopia in
politic debate, Groklaw in legal cases
Some enhancements have been proposed in the basic
●

collaboration software: provenance and color-coding for
reliability representation in Wikipedia are two examples
A promising approach to collaboration is the extension of
●

traditional Wiki tools with domain-specific plugins, or the
creation of dedicated platforms:


Thanks

Carlo Daffara
cdaffara@conecta.it

Nonsoftwareoss

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