Open source and netiquette

I'm not linking to it. Who did what, what it was about, these are not important.

Instead, I want to talk about this in terms of the open source process.

The open source process is not without its flame wars. It's not without its controversies, its ego trips, its sharp words and break-ups.

One of the more notorious involved Mambo. This is a content management system originally designed by Miro International, in Australia. The developers and the company doing the developing had a falling out. (Here's a good play-by-play.) I even mentioned it on this blog.

Yadda yadda yadda the developers left. They forked Mambo as Joomla.

The point is that, in open source, there is a process for resolving disputes. The code isn't owned, you can always fork. Both sides can take their ball and go home.

This is not true in the proprietary world. In the proprietary world lawyers are a necessity. (They are also useful to open source outfits, I must add.) Everything you do is based on contract law, and disputes over the specific language of a contract often lead to flame wars, and lawsuits. (Here is an example from here in Atlanta.)

Even after the law settles everything, the knowledge and expertise of the dispute's loser is often lost to the proprietary project. Maybe they get a settlement, but in any case the divorce is final.

I submit that the process for dispute resolution is simpler, cleaner, and more efficient in the open source world. If we get into an argument and can't resolve it, we split. We each take our code base and the market sorts it out. Flame wars have limited utility.

That is how it should be.  Don't tell me what you don't like. Show me how you will do it better.