I sent you an OSS helicopter

There’s a fable of a man stuck in a flood. Convinced that God is going to save him, he says no to a passing canoe, boat, and helicopter that offer to help. He dies, and in heaven asks God why He didn’t save him. God says, “I sent you a canoe, a boat, and a helicopter!”
We all have vivid imaginations. We get a goal in our mind and picture the path so clearly. Then it’s hard to stop focusing on that vivid image, to see what else could work.
New technologies make old things easier, and new things possible. That’s why you need to re-evaluate your old dreams to see if new means have come along
.”
Derek Sivers
, here.

In the past, we could make OSS platform decisions with reasonable confidence that our choices would remain viable for many years. For example, in the 1990s if we decided to build our OSS around a particular brand of relational database then it probably remained a valid choice until after 2010.

But today, there are so many more platforms to choose from, not to mention the technologies that underpin them. And it’s not just the choices currently available but the speed with which new technologies are disrupting the existing tech. In the 1990s, it was a safe bet to use AutoCAD for outside plant visualisation without the risk of heavy re-tooling within a short timeframe.

If making the same decision today, the choices are far less clear-cut. And the risk that your choice will be obsolete within a year or two has skyrocketed.

With the proliferation of open-source projects, the decision has become harder again. That means the skill-base required to service each project has also spread thinner. In turn, decisions for big investments like OSS projects are based more on the critical mass of developers than the functionality available today. If many organisations and individuals have bought into a particular project, you’re more likely to get your new features developed than from a better open-source project that has less community buy-in.

We end up with two ends of a continuum to choose between. We can either chase every new bright shiny object and re-factor for each, or we can plan a course of action and stick to it even if it becomes increasingly obsoleted over time. The reality is that we probably fit somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum.

To be brutally honest I don’t have a solution to this conundrum. The closest technique I can suggest is to design your solution with modularity in mind, as opposed to the monolithic OSS of the past. That’s the small-grid OSS architecture model. It’s easier to replace one building than an entire city.

Life-cycles of key platforms are likely to now be a few years at best (rather than decades if starting in the 1990s). Hence, we need to limit complexity (as per the triple-constraint of OSS) and functionality to support the most high-value objectives.

I’m sure you face the same conundrums on a regular basis. Please leave a comment below to tell us how you overcome them.

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