Last weekend I attended DDDSydney and one of the most interesting sessions was a panel session about Microsoft and Opensource (Open Source & Microsoft Ecosystem); though as these things go, it went quickly off(ish) topic as expected by the panelists whom I'll refer to as the crazy drupal girl and the 3 stooges (honestly no offence folks, it was highly entertaining).
However it got me thinking about the number of projects where I come have across an unusual bit of open source software that has some use (but has not found a niche or has since been surpassed) and I find that this was introduced by a developer as it was their pet open source project. Now the first question is "what is the liability under this scenario?"
Did the developer ask first as they should before using any open source software on a project? If so then the company accepted the situation but what happens if they did not (or what not made aware) are they still liable or is the developer liable? I assume it would be the company as they should be having some sort of oversight but for small overworked teams where process may not be as strong this may get overlooked.
The other issue is what happens if you introduce your pet open source software project and then you leave, who supports it? How do you separate the open source project needs and the day-job, when they are so intermingled? Does the remaining team support it, do they have the skills? What happens if the parting was acrimonious in nature then they, the team, raised a legitimate issue would you fix it, or leave them to stew?
I don't have answers to the above, I did title this "Questions about...", that can be applied universally the answer to most I suppose is "it depends". Each situation will be different I suspect but I think these type of questions should be asked by any company hoping to use open source software and developers wishing to introduce it, whether that are contributors or not.
Personally I have decided to NOT introduce the open source software I develop into my workplace, yes they could use it and find it useful but they can also afford commercial alternatives. If someone else suggested it, I'd have to make sure there was an agreement should an issue arise that affects them, that if they want it fixed quick then I may have to use 'work' time i.e. no guarantees that it would be done that evening or even that week; after all it is supposed to be fun and not stressful.
What would you do if your OpenSource project was Apache or Tomcat and was "Better" than the commercial equiv.
ReplyDeleteI guess there is a big difference between real open source with a big community and a "Pet" project that just happens to be in GitHub!
As I said in my last paragraph; if the team (i.e. not just you) thought it was useful then just make sure your workplace and you have an agreement about the use of the project and your involvement with it. Of course if it was that good you'd have a whole community to help manage it fixes/improvements so again you may not need to be too involved during work time on the open source project and only need to concentrate on issues that affect your day-to-day work.
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