[Osia-members] My thought: A new approach is needed.

[Jack Burton]

On Fri, 2018-02-02 at 13:14 +1000, Arjen Lentz wrote: 
> I appreciate the debate "OSIA (business) vs Linux Australia
> (community)", described eloquently by Jack. After a bit of ponder I'd
> like to add a few points to this, which may help the discussion.

Thanks Arjen. You make some interesting points -- very well thought out
indeed (even if I may disagree with some of them).

I've taken some time to reflect on them and would now like to share my
thoughts [again, these are my thoughts, not necessarily those of the
board].

Right up front I want to say that "business *versus* community" is not
what I meant at all -- it is not, and should not be seen as, an
adversarial relationship.

By and large, what the FOSS community wants and what the FOSS industry
wants are indeed one and the same. And if we still had any
FOSS-specific professional societies left in Australia, I'd say the
same for them too.

There are some exceptions though.

Perhaps the most stark example of that (this one is an industry /
profession distinction, but I'm sure you can see how industry /
community distinctions would apply too) might be the matter of 457
visas (or whatever they're called these days):

It's reasonable to assume that those in the profession, as a general
rule, would be against any expansion of the 457 regime and in favour of
further restricting it, for all the usual reasons.

Some in the industry (myself included) support that view too -- mostly,
I hasten to add, those of us with smaller companies, since the presence
of underpaid labour in the Australian market makes it harder for us to
compete with those organisations who have the resources to utilise
457s.

Larger companies in the .au FOSS industry on the other hand might take
the opposite view, not out of any malice but simply because of the duty
to maximise return they owe to their shareholders.

Now, whilst I disagree with the opposite view, I've never suggested
that OSIA should engage at all in that particular debate, because I
recognise that those larger companies play a vital role in the .au FOSS
industry too and they *should* form part of OSIA's target market for
membership, so we should not take steps to alienate them.

Rather, that's an argument that could be advanced by a professional
society if we had one, or in the absence of such a group perhaps by a
community body like Linux Australia (particularly given the upward
trend in the proportion of professional delegates at LCA cited to us by
the LA folks who attended our recent SGM).

The reverse is true too -- let's take TPP as a topical example of that.

In our 2016 submission to JSCOT on TPP, OSIA advanced extensive
arguments against the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)
provisions in the Investment Chapter. We had standing to do so credibly
*because* we represent Australian *companies* and those provisions
threatened to turn Australian companies into second class citizens in
our own market (that particular threat still remains in CPTPP -- but
more on that another day).

Linux Australia also lodged a submission to JSCOT on TPP in 2016, but
in it made no reference to the ISDS provisions. Why? My best guess is
that they *recognised* that such arguments would carry little if any
weight coming from a community body. Instead, they advanced cogent
arguments against certain provisions of the Electronic Commerce Chapter
which, if implemented, would indeed have adverse consequences for the
.au FOSS community.

Both voices are necessary, at least in my view.

Whilst I'd prefer to see three voices (the third being a professional
society for FOSS in Australia), we're having enough difficulty
maintaining two at present, so the third will have to wait.

> Yes there is a perception of a distinction and separation between
> business and community. For that perception to exist externally is
> understandable, as people (incl. government) do not necessarily see how
> open source can be profitable, so they see the two as quite distinct.
> What I don't quite understand is why we also appear to be working
> within that perspective, as we're supposed to know better!

Just to be clear, I am *not* suggesting in any way that FOSS cannot be
profitable -- quite the opposite!

The fact that, way back in 2012, Red Hat became a billion dollar
company, should in my opinion have dispensed with that particular myth
once and for all.

> Well over a decade ago now, I had an interesting conversation with a
> Marketing VP, one key question he asked me was "how can we leverage the
> community to do X?" I understood how they got to that question, from
> their traditional perspective. I explained that the company should not
> even try a "we lead, community will follow" approach, as that's just
> not how community works. Announcing some marketing initiative is not
> going to make it a hot thing in the community. You can't expect them to
> care for the company's cool-aid.

Couldn't agree more.

The FOSS industry does *not* exist to lead the community.

If anything, as a general rule of thumb in FOSS it's the other way
round: the community tends to lead the industry.

[although there are some notable exceptions, most of which came out of
Sun Microsystems before they were swallowed by Oracle -- for example,
very few people took the idea of open source CPUs seriously until Sun
released the designs for the UltraSPARC T1 & T2 under the GPL -- today
there are multiple competing open source processor architectures on the
market, but it took Sun's bold step for others to gain the confidence
to follow]

> The key insight might be that community is not a synonym for consumers.
> Consumers are passive participants in a product/service ecosystems.
> A community is not a passive "receive-only" entity.

Again, couldn't agree more -- that's one of the great strengths of
FOSS.

Yes, the community is far more than just "user groups" (although that
name persists, its meaning has long since changed).

Certainly the software itself is not a product. It's a common resource
to which (taken as a whole across all FOSS projects) we all contribute,
to various degrees and each for our own reasons.

But it would be naive to think that the FOSS industry is not a
product/service ecosystem: it most certainly is -- although the
services (and products, although they're less common) involved *relate*
to the software, rather than being the software.

One difference with FOSS is that it is possible to be an active
participant in the community without interacting at all with the
industry, nor even with any of the products/services it delivers.

That's great, and it's one of the many reasons why progress is so much
faster (and more often in the right direction) in FOSS than in non-free
software.

But it doesn't mean the industry -- businesses who deliver services &
products relating to FOSS -- doesn't exist, nor does it mean that the
collective interests of those businesses should be dismissed as not
warranting representation in their own right.

> Let's look at a few scenarios where companies and community interact.

<...>

> I hope my brief descriptions and examples sufficiently clarify that
> seeing community and companies separately is not to our advantage. In
> our daily work it is not how things actually work, so having these two
> conflicting paradigms can be quite a hindrance. Some people may not yet
> see things this way, but that's all the more reason to not send out
> conflicting messages. I think it would be strategically prudent to take
> this bull by the horns, and start/continue building a public image that
> actually reflects how open source works. In open source space, a key
> aspect is that the world is not divided into producers and consumers,
> but instead we have community. This is not the traditional
> marketing-variety of community (like Coco Cola and Nike have a
> "community") - e.g. the type that can be leveraged. The OSS type of
> community is one where the community often drives innovation, and where
> companies are equal partners/participants in that process.

I take your point about the producer/consumer divide. With FOSS that
line is much more blurry -- perhaps not even recognisable as a "line"
at all -- but I must respectfully disagree with the conclusion you
draw: the distinction definitely still exists in some form and remains
useful.

But I think we might be talking at cross purposes here -- perhaps
labouring under differing definitions of what the .au FOSS industry may
be.

In OSIA's early days (almost 15 years ago), it adopted an extremely
broad definition of the industry, which extended to any Australian
organisation that used FOSS. I assume that you, as a founding director,
would have been involved in that decision.

That definition was very useful then -- because we as a very young
industry were still effectively "manning the barricades": fighting for
acceptance of FOSS in a world where many organisations still seemed
almost allergic to it as a matter of (rather misguided) policy.

But the world has changed since then. Today, I'd be quite surprised if
*any* company existed that didn't use any FOSS at all.

[That particular battle has been long since won -- but the overall "war"
(if I might be permitted to stretch the metaphor that far) clearly has
not. The text of [CP]TPP which endangers the future of the .au FOSS
industry directly, the final report of the ICT Procurement Task Force
which failed to mention FOSS at all, the continued proliferation of
single-vendor software procurement arrangements in government and the
perversion of open standards (and near total disregard for privacy)
embodied in the various other recent Commonwealth initiatives all bear
ample witness to that.]

So a definition of the .au FOSS industry that today resolves to "all
Australian businesses" is in my view no longer particularly helpful.

Slightly more recently (almost 10 years ago), at OpenSA we came up with
an alternative definition of the industry: "any organisation that has a
physical presence in, or transacts business in, South Australia and
operates at least one line of business here directly relevant to FOSS".

If we remove the word "South" from "South Australia", I think that's a
far more useful definition for OSIA to adopt today.

It no longer includes businesses that merely use FOSS. But it still
includes, at a minimum, those businesses which develop, maintain, sell,
deploy, support, document or consult on FOSS, provide education,
training, legal or other services in relation to FOSS or publish books
about FOSS *on a commercial basis*.

That to me is the .au FOSS industry of today.

The .au FOSS profession is something different, much broader and much
easier to define -- those individual professionals who get paid for
"doing FOSS", regardless of whether that's within the .au FOSS industry
itself or within the computing areas of organisations from completely
different sectors (manufacturing, financial services, government,
whatever).

The .au FOSS community is broader still -- it includes most if not all
of the profession but also includes those who *don't* get paid for
their (just as valuable) contributions and also includes those who only
*use* FOSS.

Companies who merely use FOSS, or even those who contribute back too,
but don't actually operate any lines of business related to FOSS, are
clearly still members of the community, but in my view not members of
the industry -- that's where our definitions start to diverge
substantially.

[in reality it's slightly more complicated, because we do need to take
open standards into account too -- but for clarity's sake I've left
that out of the above]

I see all three as distinct but overlapping sets.

Of the three, the community is undoubtedly the most important (since
without the community, there would be no FOSS in the first place) -- as
well as the largest.

But the other two have important roles to play too and at least in my
view each deserves an independent identity and independent
representation.

There is perhaps an argument to be made that the profession is a proper
subset of the community -- and if that argument is accepted, it might
explain why we do not have a professional society for FOSS in Australia
today.

But no such argument applies to the industry.

Further, some members of the industry might not even be considered to
be part of the community.

For example if an Australian company develops bespoke software for a
fee and has a policy of always releasing that software under FOSS
licences to its clients, but not releasing it publicly themselves
(although of course by definition their clients are free to do so),
clearly that company is part of the .au FOSS industry, but it is far
less clear whether that company would be considered part of the .au
FOSS community (although some or perhaps even all of its developers
probably will be in their own right, quite independently of what the
company does). I can think of several Australian companies which
operate under just that model -- it may not be the ideal model, but it
is quite widely used. Should we really exclude such organisations?

Other edge & corner cases can be constructed just as easily.


> Linux Australia has, regardless of its name, had quite significant
> policy influence as well as press exposure.
> So has OSIA.

> When you look at the type of things the different organisations have
> campaigned for, provided submissions for, etc, I don't see that much
> difference.
> The original background may be different, but the objectives are pretty
> well aligned.

Agreed.

There is definitely scope for OSIA & LA to work together on matters of
mutual concern and over time there will be many of those.

Indeed, I see having two voices on such matters -- each advancing
arguments on which it has standing to be most credible, and agreeing
with each other on most other matters -- as highly desirable and far
more beneficial when taken as whole than subsuming the industry voice
in community voice would be.

> Some of you may remember that I was one of the founding directors of
> OSIA (in 2004). I think it made sense at the time, as it helped make
> the broader public (and govt) aware that businesses were doing OSS, and
> that it was a real and growing economic force. Various studies were
> done on this topic by govt agencies and others, which further helped to
> prove these aspects in a way that policy makers understand.
> 
> Now, I think joining forces with Linux Australia (under whatever name)
> makes sense.  Let's call this a convergence (of our respective
> trajectories).
> The point that OSS does not contradict with earning money (either on
> individual or on corporate level) has been well made, and while not
> universally understood, it's now widely acknowledged and appreciated.
> The conversation and narrative has changed over the years, so in that
> sense we can definitely say "mission accomplished" - not solely because
> OSIA existed, but it has played an active role. Good.

Indeed.

The work that you, Brendan, Con, Del & various others did during OSIA's
first four or five years was tremendously valuable and by and large had
very positive outcomes.

The 2009/10 term was a complete disaster, for fairly similar reasons to
the 2016/17 term -- but those were temporary aberrations rather than
the norm.

The work done by OSIA from 2011 to 2016 certainly built upon what had
gone before, but in many cases had different aims -- since as you
rightly point out some of the original aims had already been achieved
by then.

We no longer had to fight for FOSS to be taken seriously in industry --
a point I seem to recall making explicitly at the NSW members meeting
you & I both flew in for in the lead up to the 2010 AGM.

Rather, we had to focus more on issues such as government procurement
rules & their application, legislation & treaties which discriminated
against FOSS in numerous ways (some well known already; others new &
surprising), the need for mandating open standards in
government/citizen & government/business interfaces, etc.

And above all we, as an industry body, also needed to start acting more
like those who represent some of Australia's more mature industries.

It was indeed a paradigm shift and it had to be -- because the .au FOSS
industry had evolved from being a marginal one to a mainstream one.

That was a very good thing (and in many ways it was a result of the
great work that you & others had done at OSIA in the early days), but
it was not (and in my view still is not) an end result: even mature,
mainstream industries still need their own distinct voice.

> Names can be important, but names are easy.

> For an organisation or company, having extra trading names or trade
> marks for particular purposes is a perfectly normal part of business.
> Linux Australia already has a trade name "Open Source Australia", for
> example (this as per something Kathy said at the LA AGM, I may not be
> accurately conveying)
> It could have others. But that's very much an implementation detail.

Names can be interesting beasts indeed (but to be frank I think that's
a completely separate, unrelated question).

For example, you'll no doubt have noticed that I keep taking about
FOSS, even though there's no "F" in OSIA (nor in OSA nor LA). I do that
because I think the concept of freedom (without the emphasis on which
neither our community nor our industry would have come to be in the
first place) has been grossly underrated for a long time and is
something we should talk about publicly a lot more -- but at the same
time I recognise that it is much more difficult to sell (at least in
English, due to a rather unfortunate long-standing bug in our
language).

Some day I'd like to see our name reflect that -- but that's a
conversation for *several* years down the track, one which it would
make no sense to have until after OSIA is once more a force to be
reckoned with and recognised as such. Exploring a name change for OSIA
right now would be an unwelcome & crippling distraction from the key
matters at hand.

On the other hand Linux Australia is in a much better position to
explore such changes ... but I think I'm getting too far off topic here
so will say no more about names.

> Finally, but I think very importantly, is the acknowledgement that any
> organisation that relies on volunteers will always have a limited set
> of volunteers to pick from.

> There is an overlap in people (further proof of convergence), and
> they're generally not going to be involved in both LA and OSIA at the
> same time.

All very true.

This to me is not a question of legal structure / entities, but rather
a question of *how* we transact the business of OSIA.

I've said before and I'll say again that we should practice what we
preach: tasks that involve "developing" something -- be it a government
submission or a press release or some other publication or perhaps even
managing parts of our internal computing infrastructure -- could (and I
believe in many cases should) be accomplished far more efficiently, and
indeed to a higher standard of quality, if we applied the open source
development model to them.

There are certain things that will always need to be done by members of
the board -- governance & compliance tasks, meeting with bureaucrats,
diplomats, politicians or journalists, etc.

But for many other tasks (which account for the bulk of what OSIA
does), we *should* be tapping into the tremendous breadth & depth of
expertise & motivation of our membership as a whole.

And contributing substantially to just one such task per year, or
contributing in a small way to a few such tasks per year, is a far
smaller commitment to make than serving on the board for the year.

So it should be achievable for many (perhaps even most?) members.

In light of your insightful comments on the relationship between
companies & communities earlier in your post, I should point out that I
am *not* suggesting that OSIA make any demands on members' time to help
get things done.

Rather, I'm suggesting that OSIA should give all members the
*opportunity* to contribute to whichever initiatives they are most
knowledgeable & passionate about, if & when they choose to.

That's how the best software gets developed. Why shouldn't it be how the
best submissions, press releases, etc. get drafted too?

Interestingly ITPA (formerly SAGE-AU) has followed a similar model for
drafting many of their press releases on public policy matters for some
years now -- and they're not even an overtly FOSS organisation. It has
served them well: I can recall several occasions where they have put
out higher quality PRs more rapidly than various competing professional
societies and got better media exposure as a result, by following that
model.

Since we *are* an organisation that's overtly about FOSS, surely we
should be doing that to the same degree, if not substantially more?

> But even without overlap, reducing organisational and governance
> overhead will only help us both financially and with distribution/load
> of the potentially available volunteers.

As I've pointed out before, the governance & compliance overhead is
really quite minimal.

It seems otherwise only: (a) when those matters get neglected for an
extended period, causing a mad rush to rectify things later; and/or (b)
when very little else is done, which artificially inflates the
proportion of time spent on governance & compliance tasks.

Both of the above happened at OSIA in 2017; the latter also in 2010. We
should learn from those mistakes and ensure we do not repeat them.

> Heck, a different structure (OSIA and LA converging into a single
> entity) may actually entice new volunteers to come forward!
> 
> We can keep declaring that OSIA should do this and that, but reality is
> that we don't have the resources (mainly people) to accomplish these
> ideas.
> If we want more to be accomplished, we should find a new form that
> makes this possible.  Wishful thinking isn't going to achieve this.

On that I agree with you. Wishful thinking is indeed not enough -- like
anything else in life that's worth doing, a little bit of elbow grease
is always required. A judicious helping of strategy tends to be useful
too.

Yes, a new form is probably needed. But that new form does not
necessarily have to be a "converged" entity.

It could just as well involve a change of personnel (which we have
effected already and which I believe will make an enormous difference
in its own right).

It could just as well involve a change in the way we operate -- e.g. as
I've suggested with open sourcing much of what we do.

It could also involve a substantial narrowing of scope -- which I've
proposed before, but did not seem particularly popular at the time.

The possibilities are endless...

> In conclusion, I think the current situation is not viable, I've made a
> decent case for why joining forces makes strategic sense, and I reckon
> we should get on with that.

> The details can be worked out, but the direction needs to be set. 
> Right now we're just camping at the crossroads, not going anywhere.

> Let's pick a path.

At the end of the day you may well be right (I hope you are not, but as
you said yourself, wishful thinking is not enough).

But I note that you did post that before the February update had come
out (with its message about the board's decisions on the future of OSIA
at its 27 Jan meeting) ... that's my fault for taking longer than I
should have to get it out, so feel free to blame me ;)

Now that the board has committed publicly to making a go of things in
2018 and set a deadline for assessing our progress to that end, I would
hope that all members (even those who may previously have given up on
the idea of OSIA having a future in its own right) can see their way to
unite behind our common cause once more and support our efforts to
rebuild (and to a certain extent even redesign) an OSIA fit for the
present and for the future.

Regards,



-- 
Jack Burton FACS CP <jack at saosce.com.au>
--
Director, Saosce Pty Ltd (OSIA member #50)
Company Secretary, Safecoms Cyber Security Pty Ltd
--