For those already familiar with commodity-type businesses, capacity expansion is most likely a well known strategic terminology. Decisions about capacity additions typically involve the commitment of resources based on expectations of future conditions ranging from future demand to the competitive environment. However, I think the concept of capacity is also applicable to open source software communities as it relates to structure and output. In this case, capacity can represent the potential for an open source community to affect/augment the software development life cycle.
From my perspective there is an optimal level of capacity within an open source project community represented by a numerical balance between active/inactive users, committers, observers, etc. and their said output as participants. This capacity obviously varies based upon, among other things, the category of software being developed, its user base and intended purpose. Instead of focusing on making the case for/against capacity addition (as is done with traditional approaches), capacity for open source communities could be used to determine, achieve and/or maintain a level of operational equilibrium commensurate with favorable output levels.
Determining what the desired level of capacity is, can only happen after examining the technical, social and operational challenges and pressures exerted by the open source software development model in general. Yet once understood, it remains a natural extension to map out levels of effort which can be deemed most/least effective for discrete projects. By nature, the more aggressive in scope a project might be introduces the increased possibility of significant capacity expansion, reduction and/or reallocation as the community will be asked to bear more burden as a component of the development model. In order for open source to scale up as a solution or even to achieve economies of scale, the proper capacity must be cultivated. Whether this is done knowingly or not, doesn't change the reality.
Adding capacity to an open source community might take the form of adding new committers, actively assigning outstanding tasks of low-to-medium priority, or even looking to expand Q&A teams with more project contributors. It might be the case that a community has overbuilt capacity and is running into problems stemming from increasingly difficult to manage pockets of distributed members. Or perhaps capacity needs to be better discharged as too many are working on too narrow a set of issues/problems. Either way, the main challenges lies in determining the operational capacity for an open source community and working the process of achieving that level into project governance, i.e. to avoid being forced to make sweeping changes to the structure of the community for the sake of leveling out capacity.
In my mind, capacity helps paint a picture of the operational state of an open source community. Even if a growing segment of commercial open source outfits are equipped with working capital to pay workers to remain active in its communities, the value-add occurs when outside contributors can step-in and spur innovation by contributing and communicating ideas. As the importance of community becomes progressively more evident as a key element in the success equation for open source, it will be worth watching how/if the concept of capacity gains any traction as an operational model for open source communities.
About the blogger: Alex Fletcher is lead industry analyst at Entiva Group Incorporated, a research and analyst firm which concentrates exclusively on the open source software industry. His main focus is working to help clients of all sizes formulate strategy and policy surrounding their use of open source software within the enterprise. Alex has prior experience as a consultant, software engineer and start-up founder. He can be reached at alex dot fletcher -at- entivagroup dot com.
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