Open Source is not Pirates of the Caribbean’s Tortuga

Remember the pirate port-town called Tortuga in Pirates of the Caribbean? Tortuga was out of the jurisdictions of the Royal Navy and the East India Trading Company. The place really lacked order. In Tortuga, pirates got slapped and first-mates where found in less than desirable places. Many IT professionals may think of images similar to Tortuga when they hear the phrase, “open source.” However, the results reveal that open source is not a disorderly software collaboration, so the images of Tortuga don’t apply.

Now think back again with me to Port Royal. Port Royal was the heavily-guarded British Caribbean stronghold. Most of the time, order was maintained, and only a few major problems occurred such as when Lady Elizabeth was abducted by pirates. How could the Governor’s daughter be kidnapped in such a secure place? However, Port Royal maintained the very important image of being under British control regardless of real threats and problems. Now this depiction could accurately portray our more commercial-ware solutions.

So, if open source is not Tortuga and obviously not Port Royal, what, or more accurately who, best represents open source? The answer is simple – Captain Jack Sparrow and his loyal team of swashbucklers. The analogy makes sense, really. Sparrow’s wit and genius didn’t work well in Tortuga. However, he thrived in Port Royal. Likewise, open source can thrive in the enterprise. Like Captain Jack’s team, the dedicated development teams behind open source are loyal and they are motivated to do well.

This approach is very similar to the Google motto, “Don’t be evil.” Likewise, Google’s adoption of open source is well known. During the summer of 2005, Google donated $2 million to “The Summer of Code” project. This effort encouraged students to participate in open source projects. Google saw a 93% to 94% success rate with the projects they sponsored through this program. Jack Sparrow experienced similar results with his team during the Pirates trilogy.

Stable, cheaper, and more flexible solutions are being developed and deployed with open source powered building blocks across many enterprises similar to Port Royal. Early this year (January 23, 2007), Wal-Mart selected the SuSE Linux operating system for their lower-cost commodity servers. Likewise, the Web 2.0 success of Zillow.com was enabled by the open source database MySQL for its clustered environment.

Quite simply, more people working on the software yields a better product; quicker responses to problems than commercial-ware; and a more cost-effective infrastructure. Returning to our Pirates analogy, Will Turner could have waited on the British Fleet to rescue Elizabeth, but he wanted results, so he turned to Jack.

Image Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drawing_of_Act_I_Finale.jpg