Professional Licensing for Open Source Developers

In our previous post, we explored how the occupancy permit approach used to get real estate professionals paid can be used to get open-source developers paid.

The question now is, what value do those who pay for the software get, if the code their software is built from is available for all and sundry?

Let’s go back to our building analogy.

When you walk into a building, you have some level of assurance that it will not fall down on you.

You have confidence in its construction materials. But good materials alone do not make a good building. What has this got to do with you, the open source software developer?

Why do architects and engineers have to sign the occupancy permit? They sign it because they are certain that the building is up to standards.

Their sign is the owner’s assurance that the building will not come crumbling down on them. That assurance is what the owner pays for. By appending their sign on the occupancy permit, real estate professionals remain accountable for their work.

Open-source developers also need to be accountable for their work, if everyone who uses their code has to pay them.

The physical real estate world builds trust and ensures accountability through…

…Professional Licenses

How can the same infrastructure be implemented in the open-source development world?

There is of course at least one big difference between asserting a professional license in the physical world and asserting an equivalent license in the online world: there are no face-to-face meetings with the professional who signs the paperwork. And online “paperwork” is not on tangible paper but rather on bits.

What is needed is a way to add measurably reliable digital identities on the professional licenses.

Let’s look at the solution of, “application whitelisting,” to show the inherent advantage professional licenses can bring.

In whitelisting, a list of “good” sources and executables is made available to clients so that only “good” software is allowed to run on their machines. The “whitelisting” “solution” illustrates the problem that you and I can solve with sources and executables that are digitally signed by individual licensed professional code auditors, aka professionally licensed building inspectors.

How are Professional Licenses Beneficial to You as the Developer?

If you are involved with the development of open source software or other software, then the future needs you.

The building professions used to have their equivalent of proprietary code. The square-and-compass symbolism of the Masonic orders allegedly dates back thousands of years to the days when the mystical arts of geometry and trigonometry enabled their practitioners to design and build bigger and better buildings. Mathematics, like the ability to write source code, is now commonly accessible. Knowledge of the Pythagorean Theorem no longer gets you a fancy fee or a seat at Pharaoh’s table.

But certified knowledge of the application of building design principles does indeed get you rewarded. The legacy of the ancient masons is more than a bunch of pointy tourist attractions in Egypt. That legacy is the guilds and professions that set the methods, standards, and procedures for the design and construction of buildings everywhere.

Municipalities around the world rely upon the international communities of architects, structural and civil engineers, and construction and property maintenance professionals for their building codes. The tens of thousands of architectural, engineering, contracting, and property management firms around the world act in many ways like commercial offshoots of very close-knit guilds and associations.

If you are in the practice of making useful things happen with software, either by coding or by installing, configuring, applying, or maintaining software, you should be excited at a chance to get the recognition you deserve for your work.

Professional licensing might, to some, look like a way of introducing regulation in the open-source development space. They are not wrong!

But regulation is not always a bad thing. Regulation, certification, and licenses allow building professionals to remain accountable for their work. It also provides a way for these professionals to be fairly compensated for their creation and also build a reputation and legacy for themselves.

Does regulation mean open-source development will be under a centralized authority system? Not at all. Centralized authority makes a lot of people nervous.

What we are proposing here is professional licensing by a decentralized identity community. The community will make possible the addition of measurably reliable digital identities to professional certificates.

To learn more about the decentralized identity community and the process of getting professional licenses, visit https://www.osmio.ch/.