db4o developers open their conference call

We like to go on and on about the benefits of open source, but its still rare to see a company bet everything on the premise. That’s one of the reasons that db4objects, maker of the db4o object oriented database, continues to impress me.

Those of us heavily involved in mondial libré take it for granted that our best work happens when we carry it out in an environment of openness and honesty. Few companies, however, even ones who release their code under an open source licence, truly embrace this idea and continue the bulk of their activities in secret.

So this week I was really impressed to see the developers of db4o invite a semi-public audience to their weekly conference call. They’re still feeling their way (which is why they started with a limited group) but this is a company determined to do things better — db4objects has already made the web forums their developers use to communicate public, then went one further and granted privileges to some of their more involved community members to contribute as well.

One of my colleagues noted:

It makes me feel good to listen to the people who are developing the database of my choice, because a database isn’t just software, a database is trustware! And it needs a big amount of trust to drop data into such an “exotic” and “small” object-database like db4o … but they seem to take the right approach: by open-sourcing their database and their development-model db4o gains lots of trust. And that’s what really counts in database-driven business.

– Maik Jablonski

In a rational world, I’d like to think I have better things to do than sitting up until 03:00 in order to listen to a bunch of database hackers talk about what they’re working on. The exciting thing about open source, though, is that its about more than cold hard rationality — it’s about the fire and passion that drives people and it’s always terrific to spend time watching a talented team being creative as they hash out hard problems.

Nothing is ever easy: I imagine that in the future as the spotlight moves onto them the temptation will be to turn their conference call into a marketing event. If they can resist that and continue to have frank discussions about contentious topics in the open, then I think they will have taken a significant step forward. Indeed, having their meeting in a more public forum will force them to stay on topic and use their time wisely, and I think that’s useful in its own right.

AfC