Wikis seem to be a good subject for blog fights. After a while ago a nice fight between SocialText and Jot new we have another one between Steven and Mike (I've linked pages from Jonathan Nolen, as his blogs seems to be some sort of neutral zone in the Wikisphere).
But what is this about: Jot is giving away a free open Jot spot accounts to open-source projects. Steven from the Daisy project is reacting strongly dismissing it as a Marketing move trying to take advantage of the OSS world, including Atlassian in the same bag. Mike is reacting as strongly defending his view on open-source.
Now, my point of view is that both have used a little strong words.. I believe Steven should respect a little more open-source contributions from non open-source projects. We still have to see what Jot is going to contribute but I don't think anybody can questions Mike's and Atlassian's contributions to the open-source world.
I would have like to see Mike acknowledge that there is a certain benefit of the "gift" made by Atlassian to the OSS community. It would have been nice also to not see Jot use the usual "Jot benefits greatly from open source software, and this is one way we can give back" sentence. Can they stand and look the OSS community in the eye and tell us with a straight face that the main reason is not that the open-source community are early adopters that are opinion leaders ?
Also, Mike says that Steven is an "Open-Source Bigot" in the sense that he thinks Open-Source is the only "one true way" and that all non OSS companies should be or are doomed. I don't think this is AT ALL what he has said. I think what he has said is that many non OSS companies are using the OSS movement for their own interest, and that he doesn't like it.
My opinion is that from my point of view, I don't see a problem with non OSS companies trying to use the Open-Source movement, as long as there is a benefit for the Open-Source movement.
Now in some cases, part of the Open-Source world might think otherwise. Companies involved in Open-Source business models have an important interest in a strong Open-Source eco-system. In these cases, there is a big interest into supporting other Open-Source project and so refuse the gift proposed by the non OSS companies.
Now in the case of JotSpot, there is even more. JotSpot is aiming to be an application platform (so is XWiki). When I created XWiki, I was convinced from my past experiences (Netscape) that no non-Open-Source platform stand any chance against Microsoft. In addition to that the Wiki concept is one of the most "open-source" concepts. I was not willing to use something I learned completely from open-source in a non open-source way. I also thought that a platform should just be really open. I've seen how Microsoft has used it's power of controlling the Windows platform, and since then I've always tried to use as little proprietary technologies at the platform level as possible.
For all those reasons, I new that the only way for XWiki was the open-source way. I don't think it is the "only true way". Everybody is free to choose is way.
However I do think that if you believe in "really open" platforms, you should think twice before supporting a project that aims a controlling a platform when there are more open alternatives (and don't give me the "open-data" is more important speech !)
