Open Source and Leaders

ZDNet has a blog entry about who is the leader of open source which makes a good fist of explaining why there is no leader and that this is a good thing.

I couldn’t resist drawing the following comparison (posted on ZDNet here).


The inability of some sections of the population to grasp how Open Source doesn’t have a leader reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail where King Arthur has a similar problem..

ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don’t have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week,…

This lack of a single focal point is actually a strength, there is, as you put it, no single person who can fall under that hypothetical bus and whose loss will render the movement powerless. Of course we would mourn the loss of any of them, but there’ll always be plenty to stand up and take their place.

We’d have to put up a giant penguin statue if Linus bit the dust though.. 🙂