The Balkanization of Open Source

In the introduction to this week’s Open Source Think Tank, the issue of open source fragmentation was brought to everyone’s attention. Specifically, the term “balkanization†was used to describe this trend, and it was presented as one of open source’s upcoming challenges. Balkanization, as defined by Wikipedia, is a geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other. However, in the context of open source, it describes a recent trend towards decentralization of hosting and tool usage – a prospect that has become increasingly compelling as the maturity, and therefore the technological needs, of projects advance.