Book review: Open Advice
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The recently released Open Advice has much to offer those who are new to free software and its communities, but there is plenty of interest to veterans as well. It is a collection of essays from an auspicious number of contributors (42) to free and open source software (FOSS) that centers around the idea of "what we wish we had known when we started". As might be guessed, the book encompasses more than that—it ranges all over the FOSS map—including recollections, war stories, philosophical musings, academic research, and good advice.
The book was the brainchild of KDE contributor Lydia Pintscher, who served as the editor as well as contributing one of the essays, "Being Allowed to Do Awesome". The book was released at the recent FOSDEM conference in Brussels and is available in a variety of formats (PDF, EPUB, Mobi). But the book is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license, which means that the LaTeX source is also available. In addition, printed versions of the book can be ordered from Lulu and, soon, Amazon.
The material is spread out over 16 chapters after a foreword by Free Software Foundation Europe founder Georg Greve. He sets the tone for the book by introducing the ideas of free software and communities, specifically connecting the rise of the internet and free software as "co-dependent" developments. Not only does free software run much of the internet, but many of the internet giants that are popular today (Google, Facebook, and Twitter are specifically mentioned) could not have gotten so far so fast without depending on free software.
What follows is a bit of a wander through the different facets of our communities, with an eye toward passing on some of the hard-won knowledge that these contributors have gained. Armijn Hemel notes that projects need to coalesce around code, so that there is something to work with and improve. All the design documents and ideas in the world will not actually build into a community. Evan Prodromou furthers that idea by noting that once there is code, the founder needs to step back and let others contribute. It is, he says, sometimes hard to do, but is essential:
Markus Krötzsch and Felipe Ortega talk about the connection between academia and FOSS, but come at it from different angles. Krötzsch looks at the challenges that researchers face when opening their code, many of which are applicable to anyone trying to form a community of users and contributors. He likens the effort to gardening. Ortega looks at how different FOSS communities evolve as project members come and go. He notes several studies of different kinds of projects and how they have overcome the "generational relay" problem—handing off the project to new leadership over time.
But in order to increase a project's contributors, some recruitment and mentoring are needed. That's the subject of one of the chapters. In it, Leslie Hawthorn points out that contrary to their belief, people new to the project have something unique to offer:
Hawthorn's point crosses into the realm of documentation, which is the subject of a later chapter, but that just highlights one of the strengths of the book. Few of the essays neatly fit into the categories of the chapter they appear in. They largely represent a personal view of the experiences of the author, which often range across various parts of the FOSS world. They are also uniformly encouraging to those who may know little or nothing about how to participate and why they might want to.
Pintscher's entry
notes that the biggest enemy of free software is "not who most people
on the Internet think it is
", but is, instead, a lack of
participation. She notes that it takes active effort from existing project
members to get new contributors involved, but that it's worth the effort.
It's also important to recruit from outside the existing contributor
base:
Henri Bergius writes about cross-project collaboration and notes that creating libraries, rather than frameworks, better fosters that collaboration. In addition, he says, meeting in person can go a long way toward helping projects work more closely together:
That sentiment is echoed by others, including Nóirín Plunkett in the chapter on "Conferences and Sprints":
But, all is not "sweetness and light" in the free software world as Máirín
Duffy Strode describes in her look at the interaction between designers and
developers.
Her essay, "Don't Be Shy", suggests that designers (and, by extension, all
new contributors) make their needs known so that they can "help the
project help you help them
", which can't happen without making it
clear what's needed to get the job done. She also notes a bit of
cautionary tale about being chased away from a project and suggests that
new contributors be persistent:
There are several essays on various aspects of documentation. From Atul
Jha's reflection on how Eric S. Raymond's writings (in particular the jargon
file and "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way") inspired him, to Shaun
McCance's look at how to use the "crowd" to generate project documentation,
there is a wealth of interesting information. Rich Bowen plays off Larry
Wall's famous "virtues of a good programmer" (laziness, impatience, and
hubris) and notes that those virtues unfortunately give some programmers a
"license to be jerks
". He goes on to describe virtues for
another group:
Anne Gentle introduces an interesting idea about how a new contributor can "take the pulse" of a project to get a feeling for how hard or easy it will be to get involved:
In the realm of usability, Guillaume Paumier offers up some things he's
learned working with the Wikimedia Foundation. He suggests that developers
sit down and passively watch users interact with their application. It is
"truly an eye-opening
experience
". Furthermore, he offers up an important point that
sometimes gets lost in the development process: "Users are an unpredictable species. But they are on your side.
Learn from them.
"
Federico Mena Quintero has a lengthy essay on "Software that Has the Quality Without A Name". In it he takes concepts from the architectural (i.e. buildings, not software) studies done by Christopher Alexander and others and applies them to software design. The "quality without a name" is embodied in buildings and spaces that are eminently livable. Alexander has come up with a number of properties that govern such spaces and Quintero (by way of Richard Gabriel's Patterns of Software) applies those ideas to software. It is one of the more philosophical essays in the book, and well worth reading in its entirety.
There is also some real "nuts and bolts" advice on things like conference planning (from Dave Neary) and a nice explanation of "How to Ask for Money" (for conferences) by Selena Deckelmann. Beyond that, there is advice on community management and the role of a community manager from Jono Bacon, thoughts on the intersection of law and FOSS from Till Jaeger, ideas about testing from Ara Pulido (and others), and on and on. Not mentioning one of the essays in this review is in no way an indictment of the essay or author, there is more there than one could hope to cover. In addition, each reader will undoubtedly have their own slant on the most interesting and useful essays in the book.
Open Advice is a book that will be helpful to those who are new to FOSS, but, because of the individual voices, styles, and tones, it doesn't read like a "how to". It could even be recommended to those who aren't necessarily interested in contributing, but are curious about what this "free software thing" is all about. It is, in short, a great book for a variety of audiences and the (mostly) two or three page essays make it easy to read, while the anecdotes and recollections personalize it. The authors, editor, and everyone else who helped should be very pleased with the result. Readers will be too.
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"But the book is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license, which means that the LaTeX source is also available"
Posted Feb 15, 2012 22:16 UTC (Wed) by mlinksva (subscriber, #38268) [Link]
"But the book is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license, which means that the LaTeX source is also available"
Posted Mar 1, 2012 12:27 UTC (Thu) by bros (subscriber, #75198) [Link]
Not just nice - it's very important also.
The way how I see publishing industry of the future (hopefully, not that distant one) - openly developing books and getting authors/contributors paid using donation based model - should improve both, the quality of the books and the way how we treat them. If it's open - it's never getting old, it's getting updated as soon as there is a change in the matters described and there is someone willing to make the book being in-sync again.
Kudos to all the authors and especially the editor (usually this role implies a lot of coordination work)!
"But the book is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license, which means that the LaTeX source is also available"
Posted Mar 3, 2012 11:31 UTC (Sat) by John_Doe (guest, #76040) [Link]
> it's getting updated as soon as there is a change
And you consider that an ... advantage? Here's a thought for you:
> "For example, it appeared from The Times of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother, in his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother's speech, in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened."
Source: http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/3.html
"But the book is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license, which means that the LaTeX source is also available"
Posted Mar 3, 2012 14:14 UTC (Sat) by bros (subscriber, #75198) [Link]
Good point. I should have mentioned, that I'm referring to writing technical books mainly. Now that I think about this more, freezing the book at some point might be a good thing to do too.
Thanks for your comment.
"But the book is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license, which means that the LaTeX source is also available"
Posted Apr 15, 2012 2:03 UTC (Sun) by steffen780 (guest, #68142) [Link]
Book review: Open Advice
Posted Feb 16, 2012 1:34 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
This is a very important point. The people who initially wrote the software, or have been intimately familiar with it for years can't see the rough spots or gaps in logic that confuse a newcomer.
I remember reading about how HeathKit used to test it's new beginner kits, and the problems that they had recruiting people to do so, not because people weren't interested in doing the work, but rather because they found that after a person had completed a couple of kits they were no longer a beginner, and as such didn't find the mistakes that would confuse a beginner any longer.
someone new starting to work on your project (either by writing code, or by using it and being willing to ask questions about problems they are having) are very valuable resources, exactly because of their ignorance.
Book review: Open Advice
Posted Mar 3, 2012 11:57 UTC (Sat) by John_Doe (guest, #76040) [Link]
Book review: Open Advice
Posted Feb 17, 2012 10:03 UTC (Fri) by ebirdie (guest, #512) [Link]
I find that nice, that women this numerous have found interesting things to do, learn and have fun from these projects instead of coding. I know there are women coding and doing many tasks just like men and there are men equal or more to women in the mosaic as well, I just didn't count the genders in the mosaic. I don't mean this comment to be taken as a sexists role model. Somehow the authors mosaic just stroke thru better than Valerie Hanson's name and awereness of her gender in a Kernel section article. As another example, if I remember right, Rebecca Sobol has been working for FOSS via lwn.net since its very early days.
Despite of many acknowledgable women in FOSS, my perception has been that FOSS scenery has had heavy bias to males and I'm not one of those keen on changing the situation by making fuss over it (actually just made with this comment, but will keep my denial mode). The book and the above observation definately changes my perception. I think I will buy the book, not because what I said above about women vs. men in FOSS, but purely because the book review gave incentives.
If someone finds this comment amusing because of its hairline dancing, it is just because I live in a country, where I'm just sick of women being nervously sensitive to counter argument comments they find sexists. I'm almost giving up posting this comment, when I think about that cultural behaviour we have. If conversation between genders is hard in real life at times, online conversations make it to power 2 and conversations over cultural borders might make it even more hazard.
Book review: Open Advice
Posted Feb 18, 2012 22:35 UTC (Sat) by nightrose (guest, #82769) [Link]
I have the pleasure to work with many amazing women in various Free Software projects and I was psyched when so many of them agreed to be a part of the project.
Cheers
Lydia
Role Models And Gender Stereotypes
Posted Mar 2, 2012 8:30 UTC (Fri) by ldo (guest, #40946) [Link]
Is this a gender stereotype, that females look for role models to influence them into particular activities, males don’t? Because there were never glamorous computer programmers or software geeks on TV or in the magazines or books I read when young (1970s and earlier), there were just the occasional computers themselves, and I was filled with curiosity as to how they worked—of all the technology I was exposed to, they seemed the most magical.
Is that not the kind of thing a girl would do?
Role Models And Gender Stereotypes
Posted Mar 3, 2012 12:05 UTC (Sat) by John_Doe (guest, #76040) [Link]
Yes, it is just a gender stereotype.
Now that this is off the table, do you perhaps also have something to contribute on the TECHNICAL ISSUES covered in the book?
Thank you.
Book review: Open Advice
Posted Mar 3, 2012 12:22 UTC (Sat) by John_Doe (guest, #76040) [Link]
Book review: Open Advice
Posted Mar 3, 2012 22:34 UTC (Sat) by nightrose (guest, #82769) [Link]
Book review: Open Advice
Posted Mar 6, 2012 12:00 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Judging from this, he wants to be offensive. Just another sexist troll, ignore him.
Book review: Open Advice
Posted Mar 18, 2012 9:14 UTC (Sun) by nightrose (guest, #82769) [Link]
Book review: Open Advice
Posted Mar 3, 2012 11:44 UTC (Sat) by John_Doe (guest, #76040) [Link]