Theseus’ OSS transformation

Last week we compared OSS to Theseus’ ship, how it was constantly being rebuilt mid-voyage, then posing the question whether it was still actually the same ship.

OSS transformation is increasingly becoming a Theseus’ ship model. In the past, we may’ve had the chance to do big-bang cutovers, where we simply migrated users from one solution to another. This doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, probably because of the complexity of systems in our OSS ecosystems. We’re now being asked to replace components while the ship keeps moving, which isn’t suited to the behemoth, monolithic OSS of the past.

This new model requires a much more modular approach to solution design, creating components that can be shared and consumed by other components, with relationships in data rather than system interconnectedness. In other words, careful planning to avoid the chess-board analogy.

In some ways, we probably have the OTT (over the top) play to thank for this new modular approach. We’ve now become more catalog-driven, agile, web-scaled and microservices in our way of thinking, giving us the smaller building blocks to change out pieces mid-voyage. The behemoth OSS never (rarely?) allowed this level of adaptability.

This complexity of transformation is probably part of the reason why behemoth software stacks across all industries are going to become increasingly rare in coming years.

In our case the Theseus paradox is an easy one to answer. If we change out each component of our OSS mid-voyage, it’s still our OSS, but it looks vastly different to the one that we started the voyage with.

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