Open Source Communities as Biological Ecosystems
Presented by:
Debra Cerda
Debra is Director of Client Success & Compliance at Command Prompt Inc., supporting clients service and project needs for PostgreSQL consulting including database architecture, management, and optimization.
Debra has a Bachelor of Science in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology. She has 25 years of experience in data acquisition, analysis, and management as well as project management and RDBMS development in both private and government sectors in the water industry.
Debra is an open source and PostgreSQL advocate, having volunteered for various Postgres events and organizations including serving of the Board of the U.S. PostgreSQL Association. She is an organizer of the Austin Postgres Meetup Group, and Postgres Conference Series, and serves as lead of the Postgres Conference Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiative Workgroup for Postgres Conference series.
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The study of social insects has long demonstrated the critical importance of eusociality to maintain biodiversity in an ecosystem. Eusociality (“eu” from the Greek meaning good/real), the highest level of animal sociality, includes cooperative brood care, overlapping generations within a colony of adults, and the division of labor into specialized behavioral groups. In addition to having a well-defined division of labor, social insects, including ants and bees, communicate between individuals and are able to solve complex problems. (Colonies are defined as “superorganisms,” which work collectively and in an unified manner to support the colony.)
Debra Cerda explores the parallel between key components of the organizational structure and behavior of these insects to diverse and thriving open source communities, drawing on examples of open source platforms at risk of extinction. (The Ecological Studies of Open Source Software Ecosystems (ECOS) is one example of the practical application of studies of ecology to open source software systems, especially when it comes to robustness and fitness of a system.) Challenges exist in these communities in onboarding new members, but these can be addressed by creating inclusive content and diverse opportunities for users and developers at different stages of learning phase and through various methods. There are many ways to contribute to open source beyond contributing code or technical documentation—project managers, advocates, and users all play integral roles in unified open source communities.
An open source software or platform is only as strong as the community and companies which support it. Whether an open source software thrives or withers and dies is dependent on all of its members.
- Date:
- Duration:
- 50 min
- Room:
- Conference:
- PGConf Local: Austin [PgConf.US]
- Language:
- Track:
- Open Source
- Difficulty:
- Medium