The majority of companies that use open source understand its business value and identify its advantages in efficiency, flexibility, interoperability, and speed of innovation. Yet only half of these companies report practicing basic open source management, such as community development, code maintenance, and the like, according to the latest Future of Open Source survey.
From Open Source Software to Open Source Strategy
How the Smartest Executives Are Using Open Source Techniques to Optimize Corporate Strategy
What Is Open Source Strategy? — Open Tech Strategies | Blog
There is a lot of documentation out there on how to do open source well at the project level. Historically, many projects have been started by developers, often on their own initiative, and the first non-technical questions they faced tended to be about project coordination (like "What collaboration tools shall we use?" or "What will our code review practices be?") and about community management (like "How do we decide who has commit access?" and "How do we integrate newcomers smoothly?"). Because developers hate to solve the same problems over and over, there is a wealth of detailed and varied material addressing those sorts of questions (we've even written some ourselves, but it's just a drop in the bucket of what's available). Taken together, this literature thoroughly answers the question "How do we execute the best tactics for developing open source software?"
Open source and the software supply chain
Managing something as esoteric as resources for building software with a variety of contributions made by the open source community is more amorphic.
Open source engagement in organizations
Companies, governments, and other organizations big and small are working with open source to achieve their goals. Teams range from barely considering it to ...
The shape of open source
At its core, open source is about collaboration. Whether it’s version control, licenses, or issue trackers—everything exists to support people working with each other. Open source embodies a model for…
Measuring Your Open Source Program’s Success
Open source program managers must demonstrate the ROI of their efforts. This guide provides an overview of some of the standard ways that organizations evaluate their open source programs, projects, and contributions.
Tools for Managing Open Source Programs
The road to strategic use of open source starts with a carefully planned, organized, and empowered open source program office to guide and manage its creation, distribution, and use. But that’s just a first step. To get such an office underway and running smoothly, you need the right tools. These mission-critical tools will be used to track goals and metrics in departments from engineering and legal to executive leadership, PR, and marketing, and give employees all the resources they need to gather data, provide snapshots of performance, and manage the daily use of open source within your company.
Open Source Resistance
A direct-action manifesto for maintainers keeping open source alive on company time.
Open Source Explained — Open Indie
Musings on the concept of ‘open source’, in the broadest possible definition of the term. Also an invitation to become a participant in ...
Single-Vendor Open Source Firms (and Their Intellectual Property Strategies)
Dirk Riehle, dirk@riehle.org An edited version was published in Computer magazine, April 2020 Abstract This article present a particular business model for commercial open source firms, called the …
Why Open Source Is Good For Business
You may have heard of the term open source but what does it actually mean and how can it help us as consumers? Open source is a type of…
Open source is 20: How it changed programming and business forever
"The reward of victory is often another set of battles."
5 ways open source software companies make money
A guide on how to evaluate the long-term sustainability of the business behind any open-source software you are using (or considering working on yourself).
Professional maintainers: a wake-up call
Open Source software runs the Internet, and by extension the economy. This is an undisputed fact about reality in 2021. And yet, the role of Open Source maintainer has failed to mature from a hobby into a proper profession.
Balancing Makers and Takers to scale and sustain Open Source
To scale and sustain Open Source ecosystems in a more efficient and fair manner, Open Source projects need to embrace new governance, coordination and incentive models.
