More enterprises, both large and small, are increasing their participation in open source communities to drive innovation.
Entreprise participation in open source software development is the special theme of the Open Source Business Resource magazine of January 2009.
Here’s the general presentation by editor-in-chief Dru Lavigne:
“The theme for this month’s issue of the OSBR is enterprise participation and the authors provide practical advice for effective enterprise/community collaboration. Their experiences provide perspectives on: i) the Eclipse Foundation, which maintains an ecosystem of over 150 enterprises that participate in Eclipse open source projects; ii) an independent software vendor that sells closed source solutions constructed on top of an open source platform to large enterprise customers; iii) the impact of major players collaborating on a common open source platform for the mobile industry; iv) the role users can play in the very large (over 14 million) GNOME community; and v) the lessons a scientist from the National Research Council of Canada learned when he released software and started a small open source community.”
The general conclusion of the issue is the “the need for open collaboration and a clear governance model. With these two crtieria in place, a level playing field can be established where consumers and suppliers alike can continue to drive innovation in software.”
I particularly recommend the following two testimonies by Open Source Software Foundations:
1. Ian Skerrett from the Eclipse Foundation outlines a model that has proven successful at establishing innovation networks. These networks encompass all roles within a software supply chain — be they between suppliers, consumers or some combination thereof. Skerrett notes that an independent governance model and rules for sharing intellectual property are keys to this model’s success.
2. Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, discusses the importance of consumers within an open source project. Peters notes the importance of enterprises in testing, marketing and financial support and the various ways the GNOME foundation encourages consumers to become more active.
and this article should be of interest too:
3. Stephen Walli, a consultant on open source, standards and software, provides a view of the impact open source has on the mobile Internet and offers models for looking at the future. Walli describes the various key players in the mobile space and how they’ve reacted to, and participated in, various open initiatives such as Mobile Linux and Android. He also overviews Symbian’s recent move to become an independant foundation and its adoption of the Eclipse Public License.
Here is an interesting account of what can go wrong in corporation management of Open Source projects. It seems that mismanagement by Sun of the Open Office project resulted in a fork. Is that an example of how Open Source ‘routes around the problem’ (by forking) – or is it an example of how much work and good will can be wasted in OS. I guess both, I think it is time for a critical analysis of what does not work in OS (and how to fix it). Michel – maybe you could assign a page at the p2p wiki to gather links to similar stories as the above and make a review of the Open Source inefficiencies? I would do that myself – but the structure of the wiki is still overwhelming for me.
Hi Zbig,
thanks for your offer,
there are 2 possibilities,
1) just creating a page, called Open Source Inefficiencies, that you can update and change, and that would be part of the Business section
2) the other is to create a personal section with its own tag that you would add at each separate article, and that would find a place at the bottom right of the main wiki page, where we store ‘personal projects’
Let’s discuss by email,
Michel
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