Grants, bounties and free software

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:00:00 -0700

Bounties or grants are often suggested as a way companies can pay for work on free software projects.

The GNOME community has had mixed results with bounties and grants, so when Funambol community manager Stefano Maffulli contacted me about a GNOME grant and said they’d had success using grants for Funambol, I thought it’d be interesting to learn more about the program.

Here’s how the Funambol Code Sniper has successfully used grants to foster research and development efforts in free software projects. The responses are from Stefano Muffulli.

Companies: fostering or controlling communities? An interview with Kim Weins

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:07:46 -0700

* Kim Weins is the Senior VP of Marketing at OpenLogic. Kim spent three years as a principal in CMO Strategy Group and helped companies such as Atomz (acquired by WebSideStory), TuVox and RedSeal to significantly accelerate their marketing efforts. Prior to CMO Strategy Group, she was at PeopleSoft where she was responsible for driving PeopleSoft’s CRM business strategy. *

I had lunch with Kim Weins from OpenLogic. We had an interesting discussion about open source companies and how they can either dominate or foster communities. In addition, we also talked about what it’s like for an open source software developer to work for an open source company. She works with many open source developers on a contract basis as well as many open source companies on a partner basis. Her insights were interesting.

Interview on Stormy Peters

Grants, bounties and free software

Companies: fostering or controlling communities? An interview with Kim Weins