I've been thinking about writing a short article on the involvement of
corporations in the open source world. Specifically, I want to describe
a system or set of rules for measuring the quality of a company's
involvement in an open source community. In other words, I want to
provide some measuring sticks that can help developers and managers
answer the question "What type of citizen is this company in the open
source community?".
I think these guidelines can help developers and users that want to
evaluate the merit of companies that claim to follow the open source or
FOSS idealogy. I think it is very possible for a company to release code
under an open source license, but at the same time to be lousy members
of the open source community.
I've already got some of the measuring sticks in mind. Has anyone done
work on this topic before? Would you like to share with me what measures
you use to gauge the "worthiness" of a company involved in open source
development?
I think this will become a more important subject as open source
software development becomes more mainstream and more companies become
involved. I think it will also be important to separate the corporate
leeches from those that really give back to the open source community.
Perhaps a standard rating system will evolve from the article, if one
does not exist already.
Thanks for your thoughts.
The Sunburned Surveyor
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