When
I began with Free Software I already was CEO of a
little company back in the Canary Islands. To me it was a complete
shock getting in contact with LTSP first and KDE later. In both cases
I had business projects related with their technologies so, at the
very beginning, that relation with them was a matter of pure business.
I
remember thinking.... If they behave like crazy nuns, fine, I won't.
I felt like the The Walking Dead lead actor. Not many months
later, I realized I was one of the zombies. Still, both project made
easy for me to get involved. No regrets, no blames, no pointing
fingers.... just friendly hackers.
This
common experience can be softened. Times have changed but business
culture not so much. KDE ON Program must reduce this culture gap. One
the main issues to do so is clearly defining how to deal with
confidentiality, a key point for organizations.
When
designing a Program like KDE ON, that deals with organizations,
specially with companies, one of the possible conflicts we need to
take in consideration is the different views/models/culture we have
around confidentiality, about what is public and what should be kept
private.
FLOSS
communities, like KDE, that evolve in the Open, tend to reduce as
much as possible the amount of private information, forums, decisions.
Companies usually promote the opposite.
We
have a tough challenge ahead of: to bring organizations into the open in
a compatible way with their current business culture.
Someone might think
that it is just a matter of building trust. But we know that is not enough. We
have seen in the past how strong relations between companies and
communities fell apart in seconds. We need to establish some
procedures ensuring that common spaces can be built where
private and open meets comfortably.
KDE-ON
Program, our effort to create an ecosystem of organizations around
KDE, must define those meeting points without changing our ground
rules, which it won't be easy if we want to become attractive to
organizations, so they join us. We should not underestimate their
fears to the Open, specially when dealing with managers, born in the
classic MBA business culture.
We
have around KDE (other community projects too, obviously) many
companies that, at different levels, understands and/or have
experience dealing internally (and with us) with many of those fears,
misconceptions, reactions, etc. Along with other experienced KDE
members, I feel we can do a great job teaching organizations how
powerful and profitable embracing the opening could be.
Don't
you remember the first person that showed you how cool Free Software
was? We always tend to have a special relation with our first mentor,
that special teacher that opened our eyes, that first love that
allowed us to discover a new world, right? That is the kind of hit we
are able to create in many CxO that, hopefully, will get
involved with us through KDE ON Program.
So
KDE ON Program should be for participants a learning process that end up allowing them to build long term
relations with Free Software community projects in open forums, in a
FLOSS life style, accepting some Free Culture principles. At the same
time, it should help us to understand them better, so along the road
we can become a more business friendly.
Let's
see if we do it right in KDE ON, or at least, we create learning
spaces understanding we are in a, somehow, R&D environment. So we
all judge our mistakes with scientific, or at least not pure business,
eyes.
