How to build a community. Translation of Social Architecture: Chapter 3. ZeroMQ Community

Can we purposefully build communities?

People sometimes ask me what's so special about ZeroMQ. To this I always answer that ZeroMQ is perhaps the best answer that we have to the topical question "How to create distributed software tools that are required from us for the 21st century?" . But beyond that, ZeroMQ stands out thanks to its community. What distinguishes wolves from sheep.

There are three main open source patterns. First, when a large company throws out a code on the market in order to get rid of its competitors. This is the Apache Foundation model. Secondly, when tiny teams and small companies build their dream. This is the most common open source model that may be the most commercially successful. Finally, aggressive and diverse communities are wading through the jungle of problems. This is a Linux model, and here we are striving for it in ZeroMQ.

It's hard to overestimate the power and perseverance of the open source community. Perhaps there is no better way to create software in the long run. The community not only tackles the most relevant problems, but also does it optimally, carefully, observing the results for years, decades, until they retain their value, and then quietly leaves them.

To get the most out of ZeroMQ, you need to understand the community. At some point, you will want to offer a release, patch, or addon. You may want to ask someone for help. You may want to take a commercial part in ZeroMQ, and when I warn you that the community is much, much more important than the company supporting its products, although I am the executive director of the company, this should tell you a lot.
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In this section, I will look at our community from different angles and at the end I will tell you in detail about our cooperation agreement, which we call “C4” . You will need this information for your own work. In addition, we have successfully adapted the ZeroMQ C4 method for closed-source projects.

ZeroMQ Community Architecture

You know that ZeroMQ is a project with a LGPL license (author's note: we lean towards the Mozilla Public License v2, which also works, but is simpler). In fact, it is a set of projects built around the root library libzmq. I present these projects as an expanding universe:

• In the center is libzmq, like the root ZeroMQ library. It is written in C ++, with a low-level C-API. The code is quite capricious, mainly because it is highly optimized, and also because it is written in C ++, in a language that is in itself rather cunning and trashy. Most of the original code was written by Marty Sustrik. Today, dozens of people are engaged in supporting its various parts.
• At libzmq there are about 50 binders. These are individual projects that create high-level APIs for ZeroMQ, or at least display a low-level API in other languages. These bindings vary in quality, from pen samples to masterpieces. The most impressive of these is PyZMQ, which was one of the first projects of the ZeroMQ community. If you are developing a binding, you just need to learn PyZMQ - with inspiration, you will make your code and your community just as cool.
• Many languages ​​have numerous bindings (Erlang, Ruby, C #, for example), written by different people at different times, using different approaches. We do not regulate it in any way. There are no "official" binding. Using one or the other, you vote for it, participate in its development or ignore it.
• There are several new uses for libzmq, starting with JeroMQ, a complete Java translation library, which is now the base for the NetMQ C # stack. These stacks offer similar or identical APIs and use the same protocol (ZMTP) as libzmq.
• On the basis of the binding there are thousands of projects that use ZeroMQ or built on it. Most of them are not part of the official community, only some of them, such as Zyre and Malamute.

Libzmq, most binders and some of the external projects are present in the “organization” of the ZeroMQ community on GitHub. This organization is "managed" by a group of the youngest authors of bindings. There is little to manage, because it is almost self-governing and there is currently no conflict.

iMatix, my company, plays a specific role in the community. We own the trademarks and keep an eye on each, to be sure that if you download a package called “ZeroMQ”, you can be trusted with its content. There have been several attempts at unauthorized use of the name, apparently the pirates thought that “free software” means drawn and defenseless. After reading this chapter, you will see how seriously we take the work done on our software (and by “us” I mean the community, not the company). iMatix supports the community by monitoring the operation of everything called “ZeroMQ.” We also invest time and money in software and its deployment.

We do not do charity. ZeroMQ is a commercial project, and it is quite profitable. Profit is divided into a large number of people involved in its development. This is the case, plain: take the time to become an expert at ZeroMQ or add something useful on top of ZeroMQ, and you will benefit from growth as an individual, team or company. iMatix gets the same benefits as everyone else in the community. This is a mutually beneficial relationship for all but our competitors, who understand that they will not cope with this threat and will not escape it. ZeroMQ will dominate the future world of widely distributed software.

My company does not just protect the community - we also created a community. We did this purposefully: in the original technical description of ZeroMQ from 2007, it was stated that there were two projects. One was technical, aimed at creating a better message delivery system. The second was to build a community that could lead the software to success. The software dies, but the community lives on.

How to create really great architecture

There are two ways to make a truly large-scale software, as already mentioned (at least by those who read this sentence out loud).

The first way is to throw huge amounts of money and problems at the discretion of smart people and hope that the result will not be a cross on your career. If you are very lucky, and create a product based on a huge experience, and you were able to keep the teams assembled, and do not strive for technical excellence, and good luck will not turn away from you, it will work.

But gambling on hundreds of millions of others is not suitable for everyone. For all others who want to create large-scale software, there is

The second way is open source, more precisely, free software. And if you are asking what is the relationship between software license and its scope, then this is the right question.

The ingenious and insightful Eben Moglen (Eben Moglen) once said that a free software license is like a contract on which to build a community. When I first heard it, about ten years ago, I had an idea - can we purposefully build communities?

The answer received ten years later is “yes,” moreover, now it is almost a science. I say “almost” because we still do not have enough evidence that people do it purposefully, there is no documentation and confidence that this process can be accurately reproduced. This is what I’m trying to fix with Social Architecture . ZeroMQ appeared after Wikidot, after the Digital Standards Organization (Digistan) and after the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII, a non-governmental organization that fights against software patents). All of this came after a multitude of less successful communities, like Xitami and Libero. The conclusion I’ve made from a lot of work with various projects is this: if you want to create really large-scale and durable software, strive to build a free software community.

Translation of the book "Social Architecture":

• Preface. Crowd wisdom
• Chapter 1. Toolkit
• Chapter 2
  - Emotional burnout of volunteers
  - How to capture / protect an open-source project
  - The myth of individual intelligence
• Chapter 6. Living Systems

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