Walker2017

Last modified by JohnMarkWalker on 2017/02/17 02:37

Open Source won - now what?

The world and its economy runs on open source software. What, then, is the role of the OSI? I believe It comes down to a few things:

  1. Education and training. It's no longer about making open source successful, it's about how do we make the world successful with open source. While open source is very clearly a winner, many don't quite understand the extent to which it proliferates. And even fewer still understand how to make the most of it. How will today's and tomorrow's engineers learn open source best practices? How can we train today's managers to understand the value of training their employees in open source principles and practices? The OSI should take a leading role working with organizations to develop best practices curriculum and training, lending support where necessary, taking the lead in producing content when necessary.
  2. License compliance and software asset management. Many organizations take on the risk of open source software without doing their due diligence. There's a good chance that many companies are out of compliance with their software licensing. There are literally millions of developers on GitHub, yet there is the prevailing opinion that many of them don't quite understand how license compliance works. I believe the OSI has a role to play in helping companies and individuals accurately determine the risk exposure of their current software asset management process while simultaneously helping them to participate more fully in upstream communities. To wit, what are the ramifications of making certain licensing choices, and how can the OSI help developers and users navigate the licensing landscape?
  3. It's about communities. Lots of people use open source software. Lots of developers build on or create new open source software. But many of them don't understand the importance of community building and management. The OSI can help open source communities to understand how adherence to community and governance best practices makes for a better all-around ecosystem. Many participate in open source communities on some level, but too few understand how communities fit into the bigger picture and why their individual health matters. Communities are the lifeblood of open source development, and they have traditionally served a role in checking the balance of power between vendors and other community participants. The OSI can help ensure that the role of strong communities is better understood and that the tradition of the community's role in checking the balance of power continues.
  4. Outreach and marketing. The OSI as an organization is not well understood, outside of its members and those in the know. We need to work with our members and sponsors to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy and plan that will help us deliver the OSI message to more developers and users than ever. We should be more visible!
  5. Diversity. If you look around at most open source events, there is still too little representation from women, LGBTQ, and people of color. The OSI should be a strong voice in advocating for and conducting outreach towards underrepresented communities. We should set goals and follow up with metrics reporting on demographic representation at major conferences, as well as work with the greater open source community and partner organizations to create programs that help close representation gaps. Compared with events from other tech sectors, we lag very far behind, and we should be appalled and demanding more action.

About Me

fb-headshot.jpg

Twitter | LinkedIn

John Mark Walker has traveled in open source circles for a long, long time, always focusing on the pieces that have been long ignored, such as product management, marketing, and supply chains. He has built numerous open source software communities, launched new product initiatives, and implemented collaborative processes with internal as well as external stakeholders. John Mark wrote the article There is no Open Source Community as well as a series on Open Source Products and continues to speak at numerous conferences on the subject of open source community engagement, ecosystem building, and product strategy. He maintains a personal blog with a stream of his activities at johnmark.org/blog/. John Mark is not an open source pragmatist; he is a believer.

Contact

Thank you for considering me for the board. You can reach out to me on Twitter via @johnmark if you have any questions.

Tags:
    

Submit feedback regarding this wiki to [email protected]

This wiki is licensed under a Creative Commons 2.0 license
XWiki 14.10.13 - Documentation