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Open Source vs. Open DevelopmentOpen Source vs. Open DevelopmentPosted Oct 22, 2012 18:50 UTC (Mon) by rgmoore (subscriber, #75)Parent article: Heilmann: Don’t call it “open source” unless you mean it
It seems to me that this post highlights a common problem, which is that the formal definition of Open Source and what people commonly think about as Open Source differ. Open Source means that the software has to meet the Open Source definition, which defines things about the source being available, modifiable, and redistributable. What he's complaining about is project management and the development environment, which can vary wildly within projects that are formally Open Source. Maybe we need to have some kind of "Open Development" definition that goes along with the "Open Source" definition to define a development style that matches what we've come to expect from really open projects. It would define things like public access to developer discussions and bug reports, accepting code from outside the core development group, a way for new developers to be formally accepted to the core group, etc. It would probably be more of a sliding scale from completely closed to completely open, rather than a single threshold the way Open Source is, but it seems that some kind of recognition that not all Open Source projects are equally Open is definitely needed.
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Open Source vs. Open Development Posted Oct 23, 2012 6:54 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]
> Maybe we need to have some kind of "Open Development" definition that goes along with the "Open Source" definition to define a development style that matches what we've come to expect from really open projects.
Writing a definition could prove really hard. "Open Development" and "Open Project" sound clear enough to me as they are. Dropping the "source" word makes it quite clear this is beyond just making the code available.
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