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Shuttleworth on Open Source Development

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tue Feb 14, 2006 11:10 AM
from the something-to-think-about dept.
Linux Business
An anonymous reader writes "Mark Shuttleworth (retired cosmonaut and Ubuntu daddy) has written an informative blog entry about the problems associated with open source development. He found that paying geeks to code without assigning them managers lead to "shiny geek toys", rather than the product he was actually paying for. Shuttleworth says that left-field thinking is required when it comes to managing open source teams. See also Andrew Orlowski's analysis of why AOL eventually killed the Netscape project from a few years ago, where he describes Mozilla developers as "wandering off into Lotus-eating land"."
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[+] Mark Shuttleworth Proposes Delaying next Ubuntu 382 comments
Beuno writes "Mark Shuttleworth has proposed on the ubuntu-art mailing list to postpone the 'Dapper Drake' release by 6 weeks. He lays out the reasons pretty clearly: the delay should make the release a more user-friendly distro. He has also called up a community meeting in April 14th on IRC for community input. Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?" Commentary on this also available from the Tectonic site.
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Shuttleworth on Open Source Development 50 Comments More /

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  • Exactly... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by raydobbs (99133) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @11:14AM (#14716412) Homepage Journal
    You can have all the creativity you want - but without proper leadership, all that effort and talent goes wasted. I have a few creative friends that have all these wonderful ideas - but they have no idea on the concepts of project planning or management of resources. Needless to say, their killer applications are still brain children - and not actually out here where the rest of us can use them.
    • I think what is, not so much overlooked, but not always considered when thinking of Open Source projects, is that these developers are not working on this Full-Time (usually). This is a project divided among a group who all either share an interest in the resultant, or were brought together to contribute their knowledge in certain fields. It is unlikely that they would have previously held management positions or have acted as project leaders- not to just to govern themselves, but to hold a leadership over

    • Not some huge revelation... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dasil003 (907363) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @11:35AM (#14716608) Homepage
      I'm not sure exactly how it went down, but it sounds like he hired a bunch of developers for a project and just sent them off to go do it without leadership. This isn't a problem with open source, it's just a boneheaded decision. When you hire someone you have to train them and tell them what you expect. It's no wonder that they gravitated towards whatever they wanted to do since they had no direction.

      You can have all the creativity you want - but without proper leadership, all that effort and talent goes wasted. I have a few creative friends that have all these wonderful ideas - but they have no idea on the concepts of project planning or management of resources. Needless to say, their killer applications are still brain children - and not actually out here where the rest of us can use them.

      In that case self-management is the key. I've been there. Working for years in an educational environment where the actual workload was less than 20 hours, I had a lot of freedom to take things in new directions. I ended up coming up with some of my best ideas and was able to develop the discipline to implement them. But it was really hard not to get distracted. You have to develop a manager mentality--be results oriented. As a programmer / designer / creative, sometimes spending 8 hours just researching or learning something is well worth it, but at some point you have to jump in and focus hard on the final product until its done. Then you can go back into creative mode and dream up version 2.0.
      • Part of what makes Linux and GPL'd software so nifty is that with access to the source code one can do all sorts of wonderful and unexpected things. Port wondershape to the wrt54g. Replace svgalib with aalib and seamlessly render images and video streams as ascii art. Fit linux onto all sorts of silly places, including a windows device driver [colinux.org]. Tune the linux scheduler parameters using adaptive genetic algorithms [kerneltrap.org]. Cook up packages for compiz before the distro puts it into stable. The ability to think outsid
    • The problem with "leaders" is in how much they actually understand what's going on. Typically the people with strong leadership skills are totally clueless when it comes to understanding what is technically realistic. You've got people out there who are strong leaders but actually believe that if they wanted to have flying minibots all over the place that use anti-grav drives for security services, that it's possible. Hate to break it to them, but it's NOT possible. That's the typical leader with strong
    • > You can have all the creativity you want - but without proper leadership, all
      > that effort and talent goes wasted.

      Is it leadership or direction that's needed? Leader implies a hierarchial management structure and differentiated skill sets. But can you achieve results with the (rarer) self-directed, self-disciplined people? Is it the leader that's missing, or the discipline and vision a leader often provides?

      > I have a few creative friends that have all these wonderful ideas - but they
      > have no

  • Old article (Score:5, Informative)

    by Proud like a god (656928) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @11:16AM (#14716442) Homepage
    From the article:

    This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2003 at 6:48 pm...

    A little out of touch maybe?
    • A tad bit old, yes. The Registry article equally so. Is this blast from the past Tuesday here on /.? If so, might I request an article or two on Deborah Harry of Blondie fame? Circa 1982? I've been thinking about her all day long. Just make something up about guitar technology or somethiing to CYA on a tech news site afterall. And please include pics of Deborah and the guitar, or just Deborah. You decide.

    • Re:Old article (Score:4, Funny)

      by Capt James McCarthy (860294) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @12:21PM (#14717035) Journal
      From the article:
      This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2003 at 6:48 pm...
      A little out of touch maybe?

      No, no, it just took that long to be signed off by all the department heads and then approved by upper management.
      • If you'd read the summary properly you'd see that's relating to the second link, not the first.

        I'm not saying all 'old' articles are bad, just that in the fast-paced world of OSS a few years may be enough time for the successes of key projects (Firefox?) and companies(Google?) to infuence how such developers act and are motivated and inspired to accomplish goals.

  • I'm not so sure.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by knarph (91616) <knarph@@@fuckallyall...com> on Tuesday February 14 2006, @11:18AM (#14716451) Homepage
    that shiny geek toys are all that bad. I can't think of one thing that my grandmother (who is as far from a geek as one can get) uses every day that wasn't once a shiny geek toy to someone.
    • /*I can't think of one thing that my grandmother (who is as far from a geek as one can get) uses every day that wasn't once a shiny geek toy to someone.*/

      Yes, but the reason that its still not a "shiny geek toy", but is a grandmother-friendly tool is that someone went to the trouble of putting a proper user interface on it and testing for widespread (read: real-world) application. The article just restates a problem that many others have seen with open-source projects: the geeks create all sort of shi
      • Sure enough, but if the geek toys were never made, she'd still be using the same crap that was around when she was born, but with a better interface. I'm sure putting a new UI on a steam engine would do it some good, but only to a point.
        • /*I'm sure putting a new UI on a steam engine would do it some good, but only to a point.*/

          I agree that there needs to be a combination of new technology and user interface design. What Shuttleworth, like many others, is pointing out is that open-source development tends to produce an abundance of geek toys, but not necessarily an abundance of adequate user interfaces. It just seems to be a new take on the old "Linux won't ever popular unless a corporation gets behind it and does some UI work...
        • putting a new UI on a steam engine would do it some good, but only to a point.

          Valve did that and it seemed to work out just fine for them

          /ducks

  • Mozilla - ouch. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Spy der Mann (805235) <spydermann.slashdot@gmail . c om> on Tuesday February 14 2006, @11:18AM (#14716462) Homepage Journal
    I can relate to that comment, I've been waiting for Mozilla to implement Internet Explorer compatibility (XSLT extensions) and ACID2 compliance for a while. Even with the 10% market share Firefox enjoys, they still don't facilitate the programmers to replace existing IE applications.

    I also agree with this:
    Creating a neat C++ framework when what the world really needs a non-Microsoft browser is nothing but a deriliction of duty: a piece of vanity code. What we Brits call pointless "willy waving".


    I really hated Internet Explorer. When I heard about Mozilla, I tried Milestone 8 (around 1999), and it was slow as a snail on my poor machine. WTF were they thinking? The Netscape code might have been difficult to maintain, but what really needed a revamp was the html renderer.

    The reason Firefox did get a huge market share is not because of the XUL framework, but because it was finished. I'm sure all that delay could've been avoided.
    • When I heard about Mozilla, I tried Milestone 8 (around 1999), and it was slow as a snail on my poor machine. WTF were they thinking? The Netscape code might have been difficult to maintain, but what really needed a revamp was the html renderer.

      The reason Firefox did get a huge market share is not because of the XUL framework, but because it was finished. I'm sure all that delay could've been avoided.

      Except that the main reason that Mozilla was so slow was because the XPCOM/XUL, not gecko. And improving tha
      • At the time Mozilla started there wasn't a freely available cross platform widget set. XUL filled the need. A year or two later they would have used the Gnome projects GTK but didn't exist yet. Besides if the browser project had failed, and Gnome hadn't come along XUL might have been the important technology.

        They couldn't pick QT because Netscape was not going to be GPLed and they did want Mozilla to be open source.
  • I think his project ultimately would have been successful if he'd started with a strong architectural design. Get the documentation out there first and get the developers coding to it, rather than to some nebulous desire for a GUI tool. An architect would also have made a GUI decision, either picking XUL or some other framework, or he certainly could have designed his own. But to let the programmers run without focus was simply asking for what he got.
    • I think his project ultimately would have been successful if he'd started with a strong architectural design.

      Strong architectural design definitely helps. However, it's not the be-all-to-end-all. In OSS development you have to be aware that your programmers are volunteers. They can and WILL step out the door at inopportune times, start arguements over architectural designs, and spend time working on what they think is cool rather than what is needed.

      To get a project to absorb much of this chaos, you can do
      • Well, I was thinking an architectural diagram might have helped keep focus where it was needed. Yes, it does all come down to leadership. A developer with free rein will "write once, run everywhere else." But a solid architecture might have served as a "touchstone" of leadership for his team, even if he couldn't be there to personally supervise the day-to-day coding.

  • Who woulda thunk it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smooth wombat (796938) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @11:24AM (#14716509) Homepage Journal
    He found that paying geeks to code without assigning them managers lead to "shiny geek toys", rather than the product he was actually paying for.

    Do ya think? How long did it take him to reach that conclusion?

    Seriously folks, this is a given and one of the main reasons I don't buy into all the hype about the electronic toy du jour. Everytime I see an article somewhere which says that 'X' is the latest electronic whiz toy that everyone must have I just roll my eyes and move along. (As a side note to marketers, I don't watch your commercials or read your flyers in the paper. You may now explode with unmitigated rage because I'm stealing from you for not watching what you produce.)

    I don't want to be forced to buy a DVD player which plays DVDs, mpegs, connects to the net, calls my vet or offers me advice on what wine goes well with acadian rigatoni. I want the machine to play DVDs. Period.

    By their very nature geeks (true geeks) will shovel every bell and whistle into a device they can get away with because that is what they do. They want to see how much cruft they can tack onto the hardware simply to see if it can be done. Top that off with manuals (the paper ones if you're lucky enough to get one) which are so poorly written and obtuse that the average user has to take lessons to learn how to program their device, and the market becomes filled with devices whose half-life is as long as the life of a fruit fly.

    To all who produce this crap, here's a hint: Stop making a swiss army knife out of every product. If you absolutely must put tinsel on the tree, make three trees. The first is bare bones (i.e. just a cell phone. no music, games, etc). The second has a few more items (include games and music). The third has everything (bleeding edge). If you check your sales figures you'll be surprised to learn which one sells the best (hint: it's not number three).

    • Re:Who woulda thunk it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DiSKiLLeR (17651) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @11:37AM (#14716627) Homepage Journal
      If you check your sales figures you'll be surprised to learn which one sells the best (hint: it's not number three).>

      Actually, I think, you will be quite surprised to find out that it actually IS number three.
    • He found that paying geeks to code without assigning them managers lead to "shiny geek toys", rather than the product he was actually paying for.

      Do ya think? How long did it take him to reach that conclusion?

      Well, according to the date on the article, he had reached this conclusion and spoke out about it in 2003... Ubuntu has sure come a long way since 2003. Do you think he might have learned the lesson? :-)

    • The rest of the world doesn't agree with you though. People do want an dvd player that also plays their vcd's, audio cds, mp3 cds, and so on. I want the convience of a single player that can play anything I throw at it.
      Look at mobile phones. Integrating a camera into the phone was a massive hit. People want integrated toys.
    • By their very nature geeks (true geeks) will shovel every bell and whistle into a device they can get away with because that is what they do.

      Only if that device is not a true Device.

      A true Device does one thing and does that one thing well; it has clearly defined inputs and does not mind what the input comes from, and it has clearly defined outputs and does not mind what the output goes to.

      Then the Geek is happy, for with many such Devices and an assortment of cables the Geek can assemble a composite

    • By their very nature geeks (true geeks) will shovel every bell and whistle into a device they can get away with because that is what they do.

      The true geek will make it as minimal as possible, stripping out features until you get down to a barebones command line interface. (That's not what grandma wants either.)

      It is often marketing departments who are responsible for your DVD player offering you 'premium' or 'sponsored' content recommending particular wines.


    • By their very nature geeks (true geeks) will shovel every bell and whistle into a device they can get away with because that is what they do.

      I guess I'm not a "true geek" then. There's definitely a set of people that will do just that. There's also a very large amount of people that follow the mantra "Keep it simple, stupid". You really don't need to look much farther than all the extremely successfull open source software projects to know that what you're saying simply isn't true. Is Linus Torvalds not
    • To amplify your thoughts -- the most successful FOSS projects have one thing in common: a strong leader in the form of a 'benevolent dictator' (Linux's Linus Torvald and Python's Guido van Rossum come to mind), or a team that serves the same purpose (Netscape's Mozilla team and Debian's technical commitee for example).

      So the most successful projects have hac4ers on the back-end driving change, with a filter on the front-end controlling what gets into the releases after careful consideration over time. Idea
    • Business school 101:

      Make a quality, enduring product that exactly fits the customers needs, and you'll never sell to that customer again. Crappy products make for a successful business, because crappy products keep you in contact with the customer.

      Didn't you ever wonder why Microsoft rules the software world? There products have never been so poor that consumers abandon them...always just crappy enough that the users need to keep returning for the fix.

  • Not only open source projects... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by herve_masson (104332) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @11:27AM (#14716541)
    I agree with most of what he said, except I don't think its limited to open source projects. I have seen that on purely commercial context as well. The problem is that you *need* some kind of "geek toys" occasionnally, because they sometimes give birth to a very valuable technology (I've seen that many times). That's a complex task to find the fair balance between what is reasonable/valuable and what is not in term of focus diversion, and that's a hell of a management task to deal with people who can't see that balance (either way).

  • Why blame OSS? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ameoba (173803) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @11:27AM (#14716543) Homepage
    It sounds like he hired a team of talented but flakey developers and is generalizing this to all OSS development. I don't think the problem has anything to do with OSS - it has to do with a team of guys thinking they have free reign to do what they want with no expectations, deadlines or oversight.
    • My thoughts exactly. He seems to think that just because there's a "need to ship" that automatically leads to a quality product. Anyone remember the terrible, long delayed game Daikatana? There's a commercial product that eventually "shipped" but it sucked rocks and lost a lot of money.

      This guy obviously hasn't been involved in many commercial software projects. Anytime there's bad leadership, odds are the product is going to fail. It doesn't matter if it's traditional commercial software, commercialy

  • Olde news? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ok. For those that didn't realize it, that blog entry was from 2003. Today, three years later on, where is the SchoolTool project? Did Mark really learn a lesson and develop a solution or did he just relive a trend he noticed so long ago?

    Seems to be a long development cycle for a specialized calendar. [schooltool.org] I'm glad I'm not paying for it.
  • As far as I could see, very little in the way of specification, design / architecting.
    Without a reasonable framework it was inevitable the project collapsed.

    The actual coding should be a minor part of a project, the real blood, sweat and tears is the spec and the architecting / design (and usability / test side of things): If that is done well enough then the coding should be a simple join the dots task.

    Without architecture / design constraints then you will get toys for the boys (and girls) as there is no
  • But it's often these oddball programmer projects that end up being the next big thing. Manage your coders but don't stiffle them. I think that's the real secret to Google's success and it can be yours too. Steer them towards finishing your projects and finishing their own projects.

  • XUL (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Britz (170620) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @11:48AM (#14716733)
    I always kept wondering what exactly XUL was developed for when a browser was needed. I don't know the timeline, but wasn't Gtk ready about the time they started Mozilla? I know that Qt was for a long time worthless for cross platform free stuff, because Trolltech charged money for the win32 version (which they had every right to do so).
  • In case people are too lazy to spend 3 seconds on google... (Which from some comments above seems to be the case)

    http://www.schooltool.org/ [schooltool.org]

    Summary of current status as I read it: SchoolTool still isn't really there, but they did manage to get the spinoff 'SchoolBell' out there, and the SchoolTool work is ongoing and being included in the 'Edubuntu' distro.

  • A Generic Failure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jamesl (106902) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @11:56AM (#14716817)
    This has nothing to do with Open Source. It is about trying to develop a product without a spec., without an architect, without management and without a timeline. Kind of like pointing a group of carpenters at an empty lot and telling them to build a school.

    It wouldn't be any more or less successful at Microsoft, IBM or SAS.

  • Orlowski is sooo wrong (and today we know it) (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Actually, Orlowski reasons for deriding the Mozilla team in "wander[ing] off into Lotus-eating land" are:

    "creating esoteric frameworks". Later we learn that means "Creating a neat C++ framework when what the world really needs a non-Microsoft browser is nothing but a deriliction of duty: a piece of vanity code". Except http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009698 .html/ [mozillazine.org] shows XUL creation was a direct effect of AOL pressure on advertising and netscape portal integration

    "note-perfect bug tracking

  • 30 year old philosphy... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by deadlinegrunt (520160) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @12:00PM (#14716860) Homepage Journal
    ...is still valid? Do one thing, do it well [wikipedia.org].

    Imagine that - simple, solid advice survives time. Reminds me of the Twelve Networks Truths of RFC 1925 Section 2-11 [faqs.org]
  • "retired cosmonaut"

    He paid a bunch of money for the Russians to take him up. "Retired space tourist" maybe.
  • I think it can be summed up that Open Source faces challenges when the developers are working on code "for other people" not themselves. Two of the most successful Open Source projects are GNU (excuse me, Free Software) and the Linux Kernel. I think you can categorize both of these as situations where the developer is classified as a user of the end product. It is in their interest to make the best product possible because it actually helps their own cause.

    The case of the SchoolTool was that it was being

  • You can't have it both ways (Score:3, Informative)

    by MikeRT (947531) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @12:24PM (#14717064) Homepage
    Developers of OSS often forget that they have two choices in most cases:

    1) Meet the needs of their users and especially those who want to use their products
    2) Meet their own needs

    OSS developers need to stop using the argument that "feature X is missing because we're hobbyists." If you want to compete with the big guys, you need to give your users the features they want. It's certainly your right to prioritize based on your wants, but don't kid yourselves. If you don't give the users what they want... they'll leave.

  • I spoke with the head of SchoolTool (Score:3, Informative)

    by xeno-cat (147219) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @01:25PM (#14717536) Homepage
    I spoke with the project manager for SchoolTool last year when he was at an educational conference in my area. He said that what Mark basicaly learned with the first (Java based) SchoolTool is not to start a project and then go into space. Goo advice for anyone committing to large product development.

    The current SchoolTool is being written in Zope3 and is under tighter development control.

    This is very old news and does not reflect the current understandings of either SchoolTool or Marc Shuttleworth. This article could also be called "My first babysteps in the universe of Open Source development", file under ancient history.

    Kind Regards

  • SchoolTool Update (Score:3, Interesting)

    by krasni_bor (261801) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @01:55PM (#14717850)
    Funny to see this piece dredged up again. I'm the blogger Mark references in the story, Tom Hoffman, and for the past year and a half I've been managing the renewed SchoolTool development effort, after Steve Alexander created a new Zope 3 based architecture.

    It is definitely tricky to manage a project with such broad and lofty goals, and we've still had our share of mis-steps and mis-directions. I have a background as a teacher and self-taught Zope hacker, so I've learned a lot of lessons about software development.

    Nonetheless, a useful application is in sight. We'll have a beta this spring and serious testing in real schools in the fall of 2006. One key this time around was keeping the burn rate down and not creating specific expectations in schools and with governments that we subsequently failed to meet.

    If you're interested in open source software for schools, check out http://schooltool.org./ [schooltool.org.]

  • Paying geeks to code without managers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by heroine (1220) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @03:15PM (#14718776) Homepage
    Seems lots of places do quite well with egalitarian structures. No-one complains about India, Japan, China putting out shiny geek toys or wandering into lotus land even though they don't have American "org charts".

    The issue is more to do with programmers who can't stay on track rather than programmers who ignore the "org chart".

  • I wonder if this has anything to do with The GIMP? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tap (18562) on Tuesday February 14 2006, @04:43PM (#14719543) Homepage
    People have been wanting 16-bit color and CMYK support in the gimp since the previous century. FilmGimp aka Cinepaint was the gimp with 16-bit years ago. Why does the gimp still not have 16-bit color when the code has been around for years?

    The answer is GEGL, a non-existant "shiny geek toy". GEGL is supposed to be some amazing framework that will handle image operations the Right Way. It will make 16-bit color, CMYK, and adjustment layers appear by magic. It will be fast and generalized and light-years beyond anything Adobe has and wash your windows for you. Who knows what it is supposed to do now? Unlike the codebase of GEGL, the legend of GEGL grows by leaps and bounds.

    It you read the gimp devel list archives, you'll see many cases of people saying, "I want to code CMYK", or, "I have 16 bit support". The developers always send them away, "You are doing things the Wrong Way, you must work on GEGL instead!" The result is, development is killed.

    What of GEGL? Years go by and it's nothing more a "design document" aka Musings of a Lotus-Eater, that hasn't been updated since the Clinton administration. A CVS repository that goes eight months at a time between commits. No code that actually compiles and does anything. It's still just a pipe-dream shiny geek toy.

    Mark Shutteworth tried to fund someone to work on GEGL. I imagine nothing ever came of it.

    • Actually, Firefox came after that period of lotus-eating Orlowski describes.

      I'm not sure there's much to disagree with in his analysis.
      • Orlowski is miles off.

        See how Firefox developed once it came out from under a corporate yoke. All those shiny geek toys (XUL, plugins, etc) started getting the attention they needed instead of making it work on an infinite number of badly written web pages.

        Orlowski is just a hack who slags things off on the cusp of thier sucess. Hes turned The Register into a personal rant blogg, dont be suprised when it goes bankrupt.

        Mark Shuttleworth on the other hand clearly states the problem, gives a lucid account of i

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