Working at 120% without a burn-out

Sander van der Waal – OSS Watch

TransferSummit – 7 September 2011

OSS Watch

UK based advisory service

Publicly funded to serve UK Higher Education (HE) sector

In existence since 2003

Helped develop and drive open source policy in HE

“OSS Watch provides unbiased advice and

guidance on the use, development, and

licensing of free and open source software.”

Open Source

Licence

Code hosting

“I will make my project open source. I’ll put

an open source licence on it and stick it on

SourceForge when the project’s finished”

Open Development

Licence

Code hosting

Governance model

Open up development process

“We’re starting this project and have read

your documents on governance models.

We’re thinking of a meritocratic model to

start with but are not sure.”

WebsiteMailing List

Version Control

IssueTracker

Open up your project for collaboration

“If I set up a forum or mailing list people will

just be sending in queries and I have no time

to deal with all that.”

Hmm.. Let’s see..

Production vs. collaboration

Production 100%

Production

Collaboration 40%

60%vs.

Collaboration effort

User support

User experience

Evangelism and Marketing

Quality assurance

Graphics and artwork

Technical writing

Translations

Why collaborate?

Turn 100% into 120%

Production

Collaboration 40%

60%

Overlapping

Collaboration 40%

30%

Local needs 30%

Overlapping

Collaboration 40%

120%

Local needs

Overlapping

Overlapping

* 3 =

Ecosystem of projects

YOU?

Want to get started collaborating?

Choose a governance model

Choose a licence

Open up your development process

Governance Model: Benevolent Dictatorship

Decision making

• (Lazy) Community consensus

Conflict resolution

• Benevolent Dictator, or lieutenants make a decision

• Because they have the respect of the community

Sustainability

• Engage because you trust the benevolent dictator

Governance Model: Meritocracy

Decision making

• (Lazy) Community consensus

Conflict resolution

• Those with merit decide

• Because they have the respect of the community

Sustainability

• Engage because you respect and trust the meritocracy

Choose a licence

Only considering popular licences?

Copyleft vs. Permissive?

How to deal with patents?

Jurisdiction?

Open Development tools Forums

Mailing Lists

Blogs

Social Networks

Micro blogging

Mail Archives Website

Version Control

IssueTracker

Integrate and automate

Triggers

Set up ONLY

What you USE

Syndication

Make your project known

Choose code hosting

Submit your project to project registries (Simal, Ohloh)

Publicise (blog, microblog, mailing lists)

Talk to people at events

Read more

Open Development methodologyhttp://oss.ly/odm

Licence Differentiatorhttp://oss.ly/licdif

Document on community toolshttp://oss.ly/tools