Community source
Encyclopedia
Community Source is a term that has different meanings based on context and the community where it is used.
(OSI) license. Examples include the Sakai Project
, Kuali Foundation
, and Open Source Portfolio. Copyright for the software is often held by an independent foundation (organized as a 501c3 corporation in the United States) modeled on the contributor agreements, licensing, and distribution practices of the Apache Foundation.
An important distinctive characteristic of community source as opposed to plain open source is that the community includes some organizations or institutions that are committing their resources to the community, in the form of human resources or other financial elements. In this way, the open source project will have both more solid support, rather than purely volunteer efforts as found in other open source communities, and will possibly be shaped by the strategic requirements of the institution committing the resource.
Brad Wheeler has noted that Community Source can be understood as a hybrid model of a community like "The Pub between the Cathedral and the Bazaar” where higher education can really solve its [application] software challenges. References below provide more details regarding the use of community source as a practice in higher education.
A community source license cannot meet the requirements of the Open Source Definition
, whose first provision requires free redistribution of software. A community source license cannot meet the requirements of The Free Software Definition
, since freedoms 1 (freedom to study) and 3 (freedom to modify and distribute modified versions to anyone) require open access to source code.
A community source license may violate other provisions of the open source and free software definitions.
One motivation for community source may be to promote the use of software production and development models similar to those used in open source
communities. But because the community is not open, those production and development models must differ in subtle or marked ways from those used in open source. Another motivation may be to ease adoption by customers of complex software from a proprietary supplier, using trusted intermediaries to help.
Community Source as a Type of Open Source Community
Colleges and universities have used the term Community Source to refer to a type of community coordination mechanism that builds on the practices of open source communities. The software of these collective efforts are distributed via an approved Open Source InitiativeOpen Source Initiative
The Open Source Initiative is an organization dedicated to promoting open source software.The organization was founded in February 1998, by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, prompted by Netscape Communications Corporation publishing the source code for its flagship Netscape Communicator product...
(OSI) license. Examples include the Sakai Project
Sakai Project
This page is about the software project, for other meanings, see Sakai.Sakai is a community of academic institutions, commercial organizations and individuals who work together to develop a common Collaboration and Learning Environment...
, Kuali Foundation
Kuali Foundation
The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit, 501 corporation that coordinates the development of free/open source administrative software under the Educational Community License. The name "Kuali" came from the Malaysian word for wok...
, and Open Source Portfolio. Copyright for the software is often held by an independent foundation (organized as a 501c3 corporation in the United States) modeled on the contributor agreements, licensing, and distribution practices of the Apache Foundation.
An important distinctive characteristic of community source as opposed to plain open source is that the community includes some organizations or institutions that are committing their resources to the community, in the form of human resources or other financial elements. In this way, the open source project will have both more solid support, rather than purely volunteer efforts as found in other open source communities, and will possibly be shaped by the strategic requirements of the institution committing the resource.
Brad Wheeler has noted that Community Source can be understood as a hybrid model of a community like "The Pub between the Cathedral and the Bazaar” where higher education can really solve its [application] software challenges. References below provide more details regarding the use of community source as a practice in higher education.
The Community Source Model in Higher Education (Excerpt from Wheeler, 2007 in References)
The Community Source Model is a hybrid model that blends elements of directed development, in the classic sense of an organization employing staff and resources to work on a project, and the openness of traditional open-source projects like Apache. The resulting software is available under an Open Source Initiative (OSI) approved license. The code can be examined, changed, redistributed, sold, or incorporated into other products without fee. Anyone can make changes, and subject to quality review, those changes can be incorporated back into an open-source application for the benefit of all.
The distinguishing feature of the Community Source Model is that many of the investments of developers' time, design, and project governance come from institutional contributions by colleges, universities, and some commercial firms rather than from individuals. These contributions may be tendered as the first phase of a project, and then additional work may be contributed on an ongoing, voluntary basis by those institutions with a continuing interest in the project. The project often establishes a software framework and baseline functionality, and then the community develops additional features as needed over time.
Community Source Model projects generally operate as follows. Several institutions realize they are trying to solve a similar problem—need for a research administration system is a recent example. After some discussions and resulting agreement on project objectives, timelines, and philosophy, the institutions pool their resources under a project board of institutional leaders. The institutions are often agreeing to tender existing staff time to the direction of the project, and as such, this is not a new cash outlay but rather an aggregation of existing staff in a virtual organization. A grant from a foundation may provide cohesion among the investors. Typical recent projects have ranged from $1 to $8 million in funding and from twelve to thirty months in duration. Each investor signs a Corporate Contributor Agreement that grants a copyright license for the software to the project or foundation (modeled on the practice of the Apache Foundation). The project usually operates on a date-driven delivery schedule. This forces difficult decisions in the reality triangle of balancing features, resources, and time, but such a schedule is essential to the growth of community confidence.
The project board then establishes the appropriate structure for articulating the system requirements, the technical choices, and a project manager. It is essential that clear roles and responsibilities be established early, and the project participants will benefit from spending some face-to-face time together at the beginning of the project. Experience reveals that some staff members may not work well in distributed, virtual organizations, whereas others find the work to be career-renewing.
Early projects had to transition from an investor-based project to a community and a foundation. New projects can take advantage of the foundations' existing infrastructure and how-to knowledge and can begin as a project of a foundation. There is no rulebook for Community Source Model projects for every domain, but there is a growing body of accumulated wisdom on how to coordinate institutional investments and execute a development plan for quality software.
Community source software licensing
Another use of community source is when the source code to proprietary software is licensed to members of a defined community, each member of which must explicitly enter an agreement with the code owner in order to be permitted access to source code. By this definition, community source licenses are incompatible with both open source and free software, since in open source and free software anyone may have access to source code without entering into an agreement with anyone else, though they must accept the license.A community source license cannot meet the requirements of the Open Source Definition
Open Source Definition
The Open Source Definition is a document published by the Open Source Initiative, to determine whether or not a software license can be labeled with the open-source certification mark....
, whose first provision requires free redistribution of software. A community source license cannot meet the requirements of The Free Software Definition
The Free Software Definition
The Free Software Definition, written by Richard Stallman and published by Free Software Foundation , defines free software, as a matter of liberty, not price. The term "free" is used in the sense of "free speech," not of "free beer." The earliest known publication of the definition was in the...
, since freedoms 1 (freedom to study) and 3 (freedom to modify and distribute modified versions to anyone) require open access to source code.
A community source license may violate other provisions of the open source and free software definitions.
One motivation for community source may be to promote the use of software production and development models similar to those used in open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
communities. But because the community is not open, those production and development models must differ in subtle or marked ways from those used in open source. Another motivation may be to ease adoption by customers of complex software from a proprietary supplier, using trusted intermediaries to help.
Examples of community source licenses
- Sun Community Source LicenseSun Community Source LicenseThe Sun Community Source License is a community source software licensing model designed by Sun Microsystems that covered the J2EE software development kit. Sun introduced the SCSL in 1998 to maintain compatibility within the Java platform and make code available for commercial use...
- RealNetworks Community Source LicenseRealNetworks Community Source LicenseThe RealNetworks Community Source License is a software license. Developers pick this license when they do not want to open source their resultant Helix DNA-based application. RCSL has a free R&D license and commercial terms for distribution....
- Microsoft Community License