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Introduction
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============
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Where do the Four Opens originate from? They came from a need to do things
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differently.
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Free software started in the 80’s by defining four (initially three)
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freedoms [1]_ that any free software should grant its users. Freedom 0 was the
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freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. Freedom 1 was the
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freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing
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as you wish. Freedom 2 was the freedom to redistribute copies so you can help
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your neighbor. Freedom 3 was the freedom to distribute copies of your modified
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versions to others. Those freedoms made you free to improve the program, and
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release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
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But free software did not mandate anything about how the software was to be
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built to actually encourage this collaboration across boundaries that would
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result in benefiting the whole community.
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When open source was defined in 1998, it focused on a specific angle (the one
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that mattered the most to businesses), which is the availability and
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re-usability of the code. That also said remarkably little about how the
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software should be built, and nothing about who really controls it. As a
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result by 2010 most open source projects were actually closed one way or
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another: their core development may be done behind closed walls, or their
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governance may be locked down to ensure control by its main sponsor. Sure,
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their end product was licensed under an open source license, but those were not
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really community projects anymore.
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The control of a specific party over the code is discouraging contributors to
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participate: those are seen as free labor and are not on a level playing field
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compared to contributors "on the inside", which really decide the direction of
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the software. The only option for a disgruntled community is to do a costly
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fork of the project, and fragment the limited resources available to work on
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that topic. The most extreme case is the open core variant, where a company
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maintains the basic functions of the software as an open source "community"
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project but keeps advanced "enterprise" features under proprietary licenses.
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This inevitably creates tension when a user wants to contribute back an
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improvement (like security or scalability) that the controlling entity would
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prefer to keep for its Enterprise edition. All this control ultimately hurts
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the adoption and the success of the software.
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OpenStack was started with the belief that a community of equals, working
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together in an open collaboration, would produce better software, more aligned
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to the needs of its users and more largely adopted. It was therefore started
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from day 0 as an open collaboration willing to include as many individuals and
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organizations as possible, on a level playing field, with everyone involved in
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designing the solution. This was relatively novel: while a few venerable
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projects like the Linux kernel were set up and perdured as truly open
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collaborations, most new projects in 2010 were just owned by a "main sponsor"
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This is why it was pretty important for us to state in a very concise way what
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we really meant by Open. It was also important to clearly distinguish ourselves
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from prevalent open core solutions like Eucalyptus, which was then the only
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open source cloud infrastructure platform available.
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It was from these conditions that "The Four Opens" were born. The first public
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mention of them was posted on the then-nascent OpenStack Wiki on June 28,
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2010[1]_, before OpenStack was even publicly discussed or announced. The
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titles of the Four Opens (Open source, Open Design, Open Development, Open
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Community) were set from that day. The content evolved a bit over time on the
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Wiki, as implementation details rolled in (for example: public code reviews,
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design summits, technical committee, lazy and consensus). The Four Opens
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description is now maintained officially in the OpenStack governance
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web-site[2]_.
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After eight years, the Four Opens proved pretty resilient, consistently
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managing to capture the "OpenStack Way" of doing upstream open source
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development. Under their rule, the OpenStack community grew from tens of
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contributors to thousands. They were instrumental in the success, the quality
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and the visibility of the OpenStack software. As this book will show, they also
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proved applicable to downstream activities such as user feedback gathering,
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marketing, or event management. As the OpenStack Foundation turns to more
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generally support Open Infrastructure, the Four Opens will grow beyond
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OpenStack. Let's apply them to other nascent open source projects with the same
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success.
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[1]_ https://wiki.openstack.org/w/index.php?title=Open&oldid=9628
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[2]_ https://governance.openstack.org/tc/reference/opens.html
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