Thinking Open Source: How Startups Destroy a Culture of Fear

Software engineers of corporate America are wired in a way that promotes fear. It hurts creativity and growth. And open source is finally changing that.

Let’s try the following exercise: Write down three things that come to mind when you see the following email subject from your company’s CEO in response to your new open source project announcement.

From: CEO
Subject: Immediate action required (RE: Our latest open source project)

I got such an email after my team had open sourced Heroku-Bartender, a small Rails deployment system. I started sweating and complaining about the lack of network coverage in the New York City subway–because I couldn’t open the email on my phone.

My imagination had fifteen minutes to run wild before the Brooklyn Bridge. I knew that I chose not to inform my boss and CEO about such a minor project being open sourced. I feared that the announcement or the source code included confidential information about our business or an incompatible license. I was convinced that I missed something very big and important and dreaded the consequences for my team and my job.