[clug] Donating to FOSS. What do people do?

[Arjen Lentz]

Hi John

Be mindful that (a) "abandonware" or (b) "open source publishing" is not the same as (c) open source development. The latter is a collaborative effort.
(b) is a company doing everything internally with closed process and then publishing stuff under OSS license. It can be useful, but has issues in terms of encouraging contributions and overall process - it misses out on a lot of community benefits.
(a) is when code is no longer under active development (or even no longer maintained), or no more budget is available (hint hint) and the company graciously decides to put the code out there under OSS license. That actually has very little benefit. Note that my first company has been guilty of doing this long ago, look up the fidonet-xenia project on Sourceforge and see how little has been done with it since. I put it out because I was asked to, but effectively noone has really benefitted - not even the people asking. It's no longer of interest... a pretty big and neat but utterly dead code base.

Publishing on github or launchpad (bzr) is a good idea, or Collabnet/Codesion if you want to stick with SVN. Now, I'd recommend moving from SVN to bzr, git or mercurial (hg) because the latter are distributed revision control systems. It means that the repositories are independent of eachother, people can create their own branches to work in, you can keep a full copy (or multiple) internally - anything can be merged with anything, but! even if someone were to submit malicious patches or branches, the full history is visible and you can set to control merges into your published trunk at the aforementioned public sites. So you have your governance there, I think. Distributed version control systems have a history *graph* and that's critical to this.

It will still take a bit of effort/time though, you could do it on 0 budget if you and others put in the time for free, but as someone else wrote I'd make the case for having a minimal budget for maintaining it in this way. Answer questions, accept patches, put out bugfixes. Your organisation will see benefit as extra eyeballs find issues, provide solutions, and explore new ideas. Those benefits are unlikely to materialise just by "putting it out there".

Cheers,
Arjen.


----- Original Message -----
> Hi All,
> 
> At the Office of Spatial Policy (OSP previously the Office of Spatial
> Data Management) we have developed a Java application called the
> eXtensible Metadata Editing Tool (xMET). This tool allows a user to
> maintain metadata that is valid according to a metadata 'profile' that
> is implemented using XSDs and maybe Schematron.
> 
> xMET allows an administrator to configure the metadata editing GUI to
> look like whatever the users want with some limitations.
> 
> OSP has used Subversion to maintain the code and documentation; viewvc
> to allow users to get the code; jenkins to check the coding style and
> obvious bugs; bugzilla to allow users to submit bugs; foswiki to
> maintain a to do list and some documentation; wordpress to allow users
> to comment on xMET; licence xMET under LGPL3 and possibly other bits
> and
> pieces that I can't think of at the moment.
> 
> OSP has always had the intention to make this code Open Source using
> the
> above mentioned services and governance that we haven't worked out
> yet. ;--)
> 
> OSP has no more funding for the development of xMET but I am
> interested
> in hearing how others have:
> 
> - made their code Open Source,
> - developed governance on how to allow developers to add to the code,
> - anyone who would like to use xMET or look at the code and
> - anyone who would like to add to the code for free once we solve the
> governance processes.
> 
> We are on the verge of providing Open Source code but need just that
> final step of governance to get us there.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any help.
> 
> Johnh
> 
> 
> On Thu, 2011-11-03 at 12:04 +1000, Arjen Lentz wrote:
> > Hi Steve
> >
> > > Free and Open Source Software - often 'community supported' - is
> > > what
> > > we do on this list.
> > > So I'm wondering if people would put their hands up and share how
> > > they
> > > contribute back, in kind, time and $$$ - and perhaps why you do
> > > what
> > > you do, or "why this one/way".
> >
> >
> > > One of the perennial problems of FOSS is raising money.
> > > Not obvious how to do this when your business model seems to be
> > > "give
> > > it away"...
> >
> > That's not a business model, but a personal choice of action.
> >
> > In an AUUG keynote years ago, I introduced the phrase "a tarball is
> > not a product" and I think that still describes the situation pretty
> > well. Writing code is important, but it's not everything of what's
> > needed for a user to do what they want to do. It generally requires
> > bundling in a larger context, possibly more UI, easy of
> > installation, configuration and first use, documentation, etc. Each
> > of those things need to be done also, and each adds value.
> >
> > Red Hat is a good example of this, it's turned a bunch of tarballs
> > in to a product - adding many additional things (both tangible as
> > well as intangible) into the mix. And they sell that, successfully.
> > It's not for everybody, but what product is....
> >
> >
> > I derive great benefit from OSS, both privately and in business. I
> > tend to document the things I discover (problems solved) on my blog,
> > to help others in a similar situation. If I went to the trouble of
> > figuring something out and correlating various sources of public
> > info, why not put it up in public as well. That's contributing back,
> > but it just makes sense as well as people often have additional
> > insights (which still benefits me).
> >
> > Now, when it comes to my business I don't hoard info either. The
> > value of what we do is not in any secret knowledge we keep. When we
> > build a tool, we tend to publish it. We get additional benefit out
> > of doing so (feedback, bugreports, fixes, enhancements). When doing
> > a talk somewhere, or answering someone's question at a user group
> > meeting or BarCamp, there are no secrets. The chat is also public
> > for others to participate in, they can derive knowledge from it and
> > also make their own contributions.
> > If someone wants highly specific assistance (requiring time away
> > from the group) or wants to keep anything about the scenario secret,
> > then that's not a freebie suitable for that time/place and instead
> > they should talk to me in a work capacity. It's a simple delineation
> > to explain to people.
> >
> > So for all the actions and approaches you can easily see mutual
> > benefit in not keeping things secret. Business opportunity lies in
> > other factors - sharing knowledge and code of course also has a
> > marketing benefit, in a way it shows off your skills. That's good.
> >
> > What is an issue is that some people have a sense of entitlement,
> > and that's clearly the wrong perspective. But it's interesting to
> > consider how those people come to have such a viewpoint.
> >
> >
> > On the $ end of things... I have in the past $sponsored events
> > (OSDC, LCA, DrupalDownUnder, BarCamp) but I see less benefit out of
> > that. Yes it can cover essentials, but I personally don't get as
> > much of a feelgood out of it, compared to other forms of
> > contribution. Being there, interacting with people, is much more fun
> > - and that irrespective of any potential business. That can just be
> > a personal thing for me, I'm still on the fence regarding the
> > general concept. My original reason for contributing $ was that I
> > reckoned lots of small businesses could help fund good events, just
> > as much as a few big corps. After GFC time that was quite relevant.
> >
> > Then again, the budget requirement for OSDC (introduced since I ran
> > it in 2007) states that the conf needs to run at balance or surplus
> > without taking sponsorships into account - that really focuses how
> > people organise things, and it's worked. Sponsorship has funded
> > extra things, as well as helped OSDClub undertake other initiatives
> > and have sufficient seed-capital for each next year (as things like
> > venue deposits come before attendee payments) but that's mostly a
> > fixed kitty that comes back towards the end of a conference.
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> > Arjen.
> > --
> > Exec.Director @ Open Query (http://openquery.com) MySQL services
> > Sane business strategy explorations at http://Upstarta.biz
> > Personal blog at http://lentz.com.au/blog/

-- 
Exec.Director @ Open Query (http://openquery.com) MySQL services
Sane business strategy explorations at http://Upstarta.biz
Personal blog at http://lentz.com.au/blog/