On 24/06/2009, at 12:11 PM, Dylan Jay wrote:
> I agree with Michael here. Don't underestimate the effort it takes > to successfully "shepherd" a product and create a community. The > true benefits of opensource come from community contributions and to > create a community you need a product which is easy for others to > integrate with or is so in demand that others are willing to make it > easy to integrate asap. It's no different to any other kind of > business, you need to understand your market. I'll add a bit of context behind my comments. We're an community open source integration business. That means we supply services around an open source product which is built by a global community (Plone.org). We've released plugins and extensions to Plone in the past. Initially we released those without giving it much thought thinking if someone finds it useful then great. But we've come to realise it's strategically important for us to have those plugins as open source as it gives us credibility with our customers and also merit within the community. The catch however is that if they aren't used or are bad quality then it may be giving us a bad name rather than a good name. The other catch is that when others do get interested in contributing you need to have processes in place for managing that in order to keep that merit high. Source control, bug tracking, code review, release process all run different when your dealing with the public and all take time. Our latest releases have take more of our time for these reasons. For us this is worth it. For others it might not be. The other thing to consider is if you want to keep control of your product. It's much harder to grow a community if the community can't contribute back. > > --- > Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager > www.pretaweb.com > tel:+61299552830 > mob:+61421477460 > skype:dylan_jay > > On 23/06/2009, at 8:38 PM, Michael Harries wrote: > >> I generally agree with Wayne's comments, but not with his conclusion. >> >> We've been down this track a number of times at Citrix. Can be >> extremely valuable, but nothing comes for free. Wayne is right that >> generally you get NO takeup. If you're expecting any community, >> involvement, it will cost you extra dev time and lots of community >> championing. Depending on the complexity of the component you may >> need to provide a substantial amount of hand holding. >> >> Open sourcing is well worth while if: >> • You have a philosophical position on open source - keeps the dev >> team happy and engaged with broader community - give back, etc, >> etc. - or your code is community sourced. >> • You know there's a broader community aching to have a go at some >> piece of code you don't care about >> • You see a strategic advantage in doing it - e.g. commoditizing >> some type of technology (e.g. like the Xen hypervisor :-) ), >> building champions for your particular platform, etc, etc. >> Otherwise it's adding headaches you don't need. >> • You have lots of time and money going begging (academic, >> otherwise employed, etc) >> Michael >> Citrix Labs >> >> On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 6:52 PM, Wayne Meissner >> <wmeiss...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Elias had it pretty right. If its not "core", or you won't lose >> anything by competitors taking your code and re-using it, then >> outsource or opensource it. >> >> The main people who are likely to contribute to components you >> opensource are going to be your customers (assuming your customer >> base >> is a technical one). Not so much the wider world. >> >> Customers gain the ability to fix stuff themselves, or they can tap >> into any other customers/developers (or competitors) who might have >> fixed something, and you are no longer the bottleneck in fixing bugs. >> This gives customers some relief from you getting hit by a bus, or >> your company going down the gurgler, which some people find re- >> assuring. >> >> However, don't expect a very wide community to form around something >> you release, unless there was some pent-up need that had not been >> satisfied until you released your code. 99% of opensource projects >> out there have very narrow developer bases (1 or 2 people). >> Especially company released stuff - tends to be pretty much the >> company doing updates, unless someone else finds enough value in your >> code to want to make major contributions. Most people will do just >> enough to make their immediate pain go away. >> >> i.e. don't expect people to write code for you, and don't bank on an >> awesome community forming. That does happen, but only for fairly >> wide >> appeal software that is more of a platform. >> >> So, if its not core, do it. No real downside, and you might gain >> something from it. Worst case, you still end up being the only >> developer, you have a tiny bit of overhead in organizing releases or >> hosting of the source somewhere. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> __ >> Michael Harries >> >> >> >> > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. No lurkers! 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