{"id":475,"date":"2011-01-03T12:06:38","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T17:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/?p=475"},"modified":"2011-01-03T12:54:19","modified_gmt":"2011-01-03T17:54:19","slug":"wandisco-ur-doin-it-rong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.red-bean.com\/sussman\/?p=475","title":{"rendered":"WANdisco, ur doin it rong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Note: These opinions are my own. I’m one of the original folks that started the Subversion project, but no longer work on it. These thoughts do not <\/strong> reflect the official position of either the Subversion project or the Apache Software Foundation, which are located here<\/a> on the ASF blog.<\/em><\/p>\n

Subversion has reached the realm of Mature software \u00e2\u20ac\u201d it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s technology, not cool or hip to work on anymore. It moves slowly. It is developed almost entirely by engineers working for corporations that need it or sell support for it. Alpha-geeks consider software like this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dead\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, but the fact is that something like half of all corporate programmers use Subversion as their SCM (depending on which surveys you read.) This is a huge userbase; it may not be sexy, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s entrenched and here for the long haul.<\/p>\n

Subversion isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t unique in this position. It sits alongside other mature software such as Apache HTTPD or the GCC toolchain, which are famous projects that are similarly developed by corporate interests. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a tricky line to walk: none of these corporations \u00e2\u20ac\u0153own\u00e2\u20ac\u009d these projects. They understand that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re acting as part of a consortium. Each interest sends representatives to the open source project, contributes code, and allows their engineers to participate in the full consensus-based evolution of the software. IBM, Apple, Google, and numerous other companies have figured out how to do this correctly:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Let your engineers know what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important to work on.<\/li>\n
  2. Let them participate individually in the community process as usual.<\/li>\n
  3. Profit. 98% of the time the corporations eventually get the features they want.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Today, however, we have a great counterexample of how not <\/strong>to participate in an open source project. Subversion was initially funded and developed by CollabNet; today at least two other companies \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Elego and WANdisco \u00e2\u20ac\u201d are employing numerous engineers to improve Subversion, and are just as vested in selling support and derivative products. CollabNet and Elego continue to function normally in the community, but WANdisco recently seems to have lost its marbles. Last week, they put out a press release<\/a> and a CEO blogpost<\/a> making some crazy statements.<\/p>\n

    It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that the WANdisco CEO \u00e2\u20ac\u201d David Richards \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is frustrated at the slow pace at which Subversion is improving. But the two posts are simply making outrageous claims, either directly or via insinuation. David seems to believe that a cabal is preventing Subversion from advancing, and that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153debate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is the evil instrument being used to block progress. He believes users are crying for the product to be improved, that the Subversion developers are ignoring them, and his company is now going to ride in on a white horse to save the project. By commanding engineers to Just Fix things, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll \u00e2\u20ac\u0153protect the future\u00e2\u20ac\u009dof Subversion, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153overhauling\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Subversion into a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153radical new\u00e2\u20ac\u009d product.<\/p>\n

    Is this guy for real? It sounds like someone read my friend Karl’s book<\/a> and created a farce of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153everything you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not supposed to do\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when participating in corporate open source.<\/p>\n

    Even weirder, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s accusing developers of trying game statistics by creating lots of trivial commits. This is staggering proof that he has no knowledge of the svn developer community or its culture. If he did, he would know that nobody counts stats at all or even cares about them. David appears so desperate to prove that his company is the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153leader\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that he accuses a community of behaviors that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s doing himself. (\u00e2\u20ac\u009dWe have the most active developers of any other company on staff\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s counting stats here? The svn developers, or David?)<\/p>\n

    OK, fine. So Dave Richards is a salesperson, and perhaps what he wrote is generic PR sales junk in order to get his customers excited. Unfortunately, in attempting to woo customers, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s had the side-effect of making his company appear both clueless and antagonistic to the project:<\/p>\n