As you probably know I'm the founder and main developer of the Open Source project called DataCleaner. While there have been some notable contributions from outsiders I wouldn't be arrogant if I said that the crucial and main parts of the code-base for DataCleaner was written by me. But in a lot ways I often think of me as a medium of change, the bringer of the code, not the real source of the goal-setting and planning of the project. Also my main job in regards to DataCleaner have been to try and attract more developers and broaden the interest among users for DataCleaner, but that's not really relevant for this topic.
In this blog post I'll investigate the relationship between me, the medium, and the community who represents the real decisionmaking entity of DataCleaner. I suspect that a lot of times people who participate in a community doesn't realize the powerful position that they possess and how they should utilize the mediums of change.
Ok, so here's my main point that I want to stress:
The goals of DataCleaner are socially constructed by the desires of the communityWhat does this mean? This means that I don't set the goals for the project myself. Actually I have been doing so a lot but only because no one else did it. If the community was to say that they wanted the project to go in a direction I would be perfectly happy to help them.
What sparked me to do this blog entry was actually my friend and co-worker at eobjects.org, Asbjørn Leeth. When I was discussing some more or less technical changes that I was thinking of in regards to DataCleaner he said:
"I think you should carefully consider the overall purpose of DataCleaner and where you want it to go. Who are the users and how should DataCleaner be used in a broader context?"I absolutely agree on this quote but the thing is that I wouldn't be the one to make those decisions! I would probably have an oppinion but ultimately it's not my decision because I'm not the user, I'm just the medium of change. I think that the DataCleaner community should be better to involve themselves in these crucial themes, but I don't blame them because this is perhaps not a role that we are yet familiar with as Open Source actors.
We need to recognize why the developers do Open Source software and when they are rewarded. This varies a lot from community to community but in the case of DataCleaner I personally get a kick out of it everytime say to me that they are using the product and that they think it rocks! This is my greatest reward. It's a lot greater than the times that people pay me money to help them with their problems (that may or may not be DataCleaner related). What does it mean that the greatest reward is the recognition of others? It means that you could effectively steer the development of DataCleaner simply by putting out your own goals and ideas for people like me to realize! Easy! This requires involvement and gratitude from the community but given that the community will be able to use the mediums of change in a far more effective way.
One example of how this works is when Ben Bor some months ago sent me a list of some-20 changes and fixes that he wanted in DataCleaner. Within a few days I had effectively fixed around half of them and the rest where submitted to the roadmap so we'll work ourselves through them as we go. My point here is that while I may be the one with the easiest access to changes (because I know the product and code so well) I may not be the one who knows what the user wants. That being said, put very shortly here are a couple of things that I have been thinking of in regards to high-level changes in the strategy of DataCleaner:
- Change the name of the application! We don't provide data cleansing. Rather we mostly do profiling and our validation engine is also rather OK, so perhaps we should think of more fitting names.
- Remove the separation of profiling and validation in the User Interface. The User Interface should rather reflect the process and provide convenient tools to the user instead of represent the internal entities of the application.
- These changes would definately imply a change to version 2.0 of DataCleaner because it would mean fundamental changes both to the User Interface and the core module.
2 comments:
Hi Kasper,
This is a nice point of view about open source software development. I think this is an advantage of the open source development against proprietary development: We, as open source project leaders, are eager of user feedbacks and do the best we can to satisfy them. Our main goal is that the product is useful to our users.
As you say, the directions of the product development are driven by the community.
And I think your message is important because sometimes not every people thinks that he can change the product's roadmap. Yes, they CAN and often great ideas come from them, not from us.
Another good example of this is this post on the discussion forums:
http://eobjects.org/trac/discussion/7/48
I hadn't thought up the scenario that this user presented to me, but as it happens it was easy to do some small changes which provided immediate value... Within an hour he had a working fix and had solved his problem.
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