Bureaucracy and open source: Do they mix?

Another high-profile departure from Sun, this time MySQL's David Axmark is taking wing -- citing a dislike for working in a large organization:

I have thought about my role at Sun and decided that I am better off in smaller organisations. I HATE all the rules that I need to follow, and I also HATE breaking them. It would be far better for me to “retire” from employment and work with MySQL and Sun on a less formal basis.

Matt Asay posts about the news and says "I've worked at two large organizations and found the bureaucracy stifling at both. Some people thrive in big companies. Others don't."

It's been my experience that very few open source types "thrive" in large companies, though many are able to muddle through. This isn't an open source phenomenon exclusively, though -- look at any startup acquired by a larger organization like Sun, and you'll find a lot of people leaving not long after, partly due to the stresses of that sort of merger, but also in part due to a simple fact: Running and working in a startup or small company is markedly different than working in a larger organization.

The reality of smaller organizations can usually be boiled down to this: Employees have a great deal of responsibility and authority to "make things happen," but far fewer resources to accomplish their objectives. This is intolerable to some people, who want the trappings of a Sun-sized company to get things done. (For instance, paying expense reports on time, or being able to afford a booth at a major show.)

On the other hand, larger companies may possess the resources, but lack the agility to implement anything quickly due to the number of people involved in any decision, and the hurdles of management and politics that require 25 meetings and a blessing from the Pope just to change a logo or approve 10 hours of engineering time to address a showstopper bug. When the time in meetings to agree on approving engineering resources actually exceeds the engineering time requested, a lot of open source folks -- used to working in meritocratic projects and coming up through startups -- are going to be checking for the exits.

If possible, larger corporations that have open source components should do what they can to leave them alone and impose the very minimum amount of bureaucratic overhead on those teams. Results matter far more than process.