Open Source on Stormy Peters

Is AI Killing Open Source Software?

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:06:52 -0700

I love giving talks that explore big questions — the kind that are facing all of us right now and that nobody has fully figured out yet. “Is AI Killing Open Source Software?” is exactly that kind of question. It actually reminds me of a talk I gave really early in my career where I was worried that paying maintainers to work on open source would kill open source. (Spoiler: it didn’t.) I like doing research, having lots of conversations, and then bringing it all to an audience to start a bigger conversation.

Is AI Killing Online Collaboration? The Decline of Stack Overflow, Wikipedia, and What It Means for Open Source

Thu, 22 May 2025 07:23:04 -0700

Participation in online collaborative sites is decreasing, and the numbers are striking. Matt Asay recently wrote an article about how there are fewer people asking questions on Stack Overflow. If you look at December 2023 to December 2024, the number of questions that were asked dropped by 40%.

You can watch the video version of this article on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/WOYFIQxQoUc

Since ChatGPT has been released, he pointed out in 2023, there’s been this dramatic decline in the number of questions asked on Stack Overflow. However, the number of questions asked on Stack Overflow has been dropping since 2018, as shown in the graph. Perhaps there’s something else also going on.

Successful Open Source Software Leaders Are Great Communicators

Wed, 21 May 2025 18:41:16 -0700

Successful open source software leaders are great communicators. I realize I’m cheating a little when I say that because I think in order to be a great communicator in the open source software space, you have to be technical, you have to be authentic, you have to be passionate, you have to delegate, you know, build community. But I think all of those are part of being a good communicator. And it’s the communication that’s key.

Why AI Is Actually Helping New Coders!

Thu, 15 May 2025 16:57:00 -0700

There are two widespread beliefs about AI that I’m certain are wrong:

1. AI is not killing the role of software developer. It’s definitely changing it. It may kill open source software, but I do not believe it’s killing the role of software developer.

2. AI is not making it really hard for new developers to get started. On the contrary.

Let me explain both of these points. Here is the video with the text version below.

What is Open Source AI? Why It Matters and Where We're Headed

Thu, 15 May 2025 09:10:00 -0700

The debate over open source AI continues to rage after years of discussion. Despite all the arguments, we still don’t have clear answers about what open source AI actually means, why it matters, or how to make it work.

Let’s examine the different definitions, the challenges we face, and what history teaches us about navigating this complex landscape.

This was originally posted as a daily walk, share, and discuss video. The written version is below.

In order to grow your volunteer community, you must work in the open

Wed, 14 May 2025 14:38:02 -0700

Doing research for my Grow an Organization by Planting Volunteers at SCALE, I ran across Dirk Riehle’s article on the Five Stages of Open Source Volunteering. The whole article is worth a read but I thought I’d call out the open communication piece. He says to support a distributed community and to engage new volunteers, open communication is key.

Public communication ensures that all members of the community have the opportunity to participate, which creates buy-in and trust.

AI is Killing Open Source Software

Wed, 14 May 2025 08:40:56 -0700

AI is killing open source software. If we act now, it won’t do away with collaborative software development, but I do think it is changing open source software as we know it.

This was originally posted on YouTube as my daily walk, think and share. Below is the transcription.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgR4ww94Evk

Two recent events highlight why change is coming to open source software and why we should pay attention.

The $3 Billion Signal

OpenAI offered to buy Windsurf, an AI-powered software development tool, for $3 billion. That’s a lot of money for a software development tool, especially when OpenAI already builds AI tools and could develop their own. This signals that there’s significant money in AI-powered software development right now.

Will AI coding assistants change open source software?

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 07:10:46 -0700

I’m curious how AI coding assistants will change open source software development. If I write software with an AI coding assistant, am I more or less likely to use open source software solutions? Am I more or less inclined to make it into an open source software project than I would have before AI?

The first concern with AI coding assistants is that we’ll end up with many variations of the same code snippets, all being maintained separately. The anti-open source model.

OSPOs for Good: The United Nations encourages open source software

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 20:08:12 -0700

The United Nations is encouraging the use of open source. They see the value of open source software in helping with digital transformation, providing equitable access to technology, and accomplishing the world’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Last year they had an OSPOs for Good event, and the event went so well that this year it will be a week long UN Open Source Week 2025. In addition to the OSPO for Good day, they have added several other events including a 2 day hackathon for real world social good, “UN TECHover”. This builds on the success they’ve seen with hackathons.

Be Clear About How Things Work (How Open Source Can Work with Companies)

Thu, 24 Sep 2020 14:44:52 -0700

This post is one of a series of posts about what open source software projects can do (if they wish to) to make it easier for companies to participate in their projects.

When a company wants to get involved in an open source software, often they need some help understanding how things work. Sometimes it’s the developer who wants to contribute that has questions. Sometimes it’s their management who wants to understand what type of commitment they are making and what they can expect.

What open source governance models are available?

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 17:55:31 -0700

If you are looking for an open source governance model, there are two resources to explore.

Red Hat has published the Project and Community Governance Guidebook on GitHub. It covers things from roles of the participants, to how projects evolve (and governance should evolve with them), to policies and procedures.
The FOSS Governance Collection just launched with a collection of governance docs on Zotero. It is a great place to go see real, live documents used by existing open source software projects. (If you work on an open source software project, or just notice that one is missing, please upload the governance docs!)

Don’t forget, a project’s governance needs to evolve as the project evolves.

How Open Source Communities Work

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 19:35:22 -0700

Several happenings over the weekend are case studies in how open source software communities work.

The Dev Behind a Hugely Popular GNOME Extension Just Quit

While the news is about a developer quitting because it’s not “fun”. I think the message - or messages - are deeper than that.

Isn’t it awesome that are free software is developed by people that love doing it? Back when I started the OpenLogic Expert Community, I contacted many maintainers and offered to pay them to fix issues that our customers had. Some of them turned me down because they loved working on open source software and thought payment would change that. (That inspired my Would You Do It Again for Free? talk.) Some of them turned down payment because this was a hobby and if they got payment their family might view it and the time they spend on it differently. They took free tech goodies instead!
Wouldn’t it be great if when what you are working on no longer made sense, you could move on to something better suited for you at the moment? Working on something you love, because you love it, gives you the freedom to say it’s no longer your favorite thing to work on and to move on. You do still have responsibilities but in this case, it sounds like there was good backup.
Feedback. I do hope that the GNOME community takes this feedback as an opportunity to explore how things are going. They should survey other users and figure out if this is an individual problem or a systemic problem and how they might prevent it from happening in the future.

Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth makes peace with Ubuntu Linux community

Why People Don't Contribute to Your Open Source Project

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 15:28:43 -0700

I just listened to Mike McQuaid’s FOSDEM talk, Why People Don’t Contribute to Your Open Source Project. Â If you are interested in communities and how they grow, I highly recommend you take a half hour and watch it.

Some of the things I got from the talk:

I get asked a lot what the difference between a contributor and a maintainer is. Mike does a great job of explaining it around minute 4:00. Contributors are people who write code or docs or do triage for your project but who need help from others to get their work included. Maintainers are people that review and merge contributions.
You should users as your source for contributors. The type of contributor that is not a user is not likely someone you want.
Once maintainers are not users, they are not likely to continue contributing. So if you stop using your project, you need to start recruiting someone else to maintain it because it’s unlikely that you’ll continue to maintain it.
Most maintainers are talked into it. Nobody thinks they are qualified at first.

I did wonder what Mike would think about open source software projects where most of the contributors are people paid by a company to work on it. There are projects that are unlikely to be used by individuals, that are primarily supported by paid contributors. Do the same rules apply?

How "I am Groot" defines a community manager's role

Tue, 12 Sep 2017 11:27:08 -0700

I was watching Guardians of the Galaxy, Part 2 and I realized that while baby Groot was making me laugh, it was Rocket that I understood. Rocket is an interpreter. He might even be a community manager.

In Guardians of the Galaxy, there’ a character called Groot. And the only thing he ever says is “I am Groot.” After a few instances, it becomes clear that he is saying a lot with each “I am Groot.”

10 Ways Community Managers Make Sure Projects are Healthy

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 13:50:21 -0700

Community managers must make sure their projects are healthy. Before they can help foster and grow a community, they have to make sure it’s a well functioning, welcoming place.

[caption id=“attachment_2211” align=“aligncenter” width=“705”] Photo from the Library of Congress.[/caption]

While community managers and project leadersÂ often don’t explicitly talk about what’s not working well, you will often find themÂ doing a wide variety of things. They are doing whatever is needed – filling in the gaps – to make their project work well so that new people can join.

3 ways open source software communities could learn from Crossfit

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 15:27:41 -0700

[caption id=“attachment_2207” align=“alignleft” width=“300”] Photo by Anthony Topper.[/caption]

This week I am participating in the opensource.com community blogging challenge: Encouraging New Contributors!

Crossfit gyms are great at creating community and welcoming new members. Here are 3 things that Crossfit boxes do that open source software communities could also do to encourage new contributors:

Say hi to the new person. I drop in at gyms around the world, and no matter where I go, everyone in the class comes up to say hi to me and introduce themselves. How awesome is it that I can go to a gym in Frankfurt and have 10 total strangers walk up and introduce themselves and say how happy they are that I’ve joined them? For open source: When you see a new person on your mailing list or IRC channel, stop and say hi. Introduce yourself and tell them they are welcome. You can do it publicly or privately. (If you do it publicly, you might set a good example for others!)
Celebrate daily accomplishments. When we finish a workout at my Crossfit gym, we all post our scores in an app. It gets ordered from best to worst but no matter where you are in the line up, everyone will Â give you a virtual fist bump and most of them will notice when you’ve had a spectacular work out based on your skill level and they’ll congratulate you for it. For open source: Have a place where people can note what they’ve done, maybe point out what they are proud of or what was hard for them, and get kudos from others. Sometimes this happens on source code control systems. Sometimes on IRC. I think most open source software projects could do better at this.
Allow for off topic interactions. To really build community, you have to know each other. Sometimes that’s hard to do if you just focus on the work all the time. There has to be a place to chat, to share goals, ideas and maybe every once in a while, a non-project focused thing. In my Crossfit box, we do this in a Facebook group. Usually, it’s fitness related but sometimes it’s just chatting about life in general. The group gets noisy and I turned off notifications, but I still visit at least once a day to congratulate, commiserate and just visit. It’s a place new members can ask questions, learn more about the community and get to know each other. In open source communities: Find a channel where people can chat. A place where they can ask all their questions, express frustration over a piece of code or complain about the weather. Sometimes it’ll get noisy but usually it will bring people together and, more importantly for the new people, help them “see” the community they are joining. Most open source software projects do this on irc or Slack.

How do you think open source software communities can Encourage New Contributors? What have you learned from the other communities in your life?

8 ways companies have influenced open source software

Mon, 26 Sep 2016 10:11:06 -0700

A decade ago, I researched and gave a talk called Would you do it again for free? If you worked on an open source software project for free, and a company started paying you to work on it, if they stopped paying you, would you stop working on it? At the time it was a valid question as many of my friends were starting to get paid positions doing their dream job. In case you are curious, the answer is “it depends”. Most people will stop working on that particular project but most will go on to work on other open source software projects. You can watch versions of the talks and see links to the research studies I found.

Our World Depends on Unseen Labor: Open Source Software

Tue, 13 Sep 2016 15:19:30 -0700

Our digital infrastructure is all open source. It’s built and maintained by a relatively small community of open source software developers. Right now the open source software work is funded by a variety of methods: volunteer time, nonprofit corporations and donations of time and money by a few corporations. Is that sustainable? Or should we be looking for ways to fund our digital infrastructure much like we do our roads and bridges through government or community efforts? This is the question that Nadia Eghbal poses in her very comprehensive paper covering her research funded by the Ford Foundation.

What's in a good developer relations plan?

Thu, 13 Aug 2015 15:17:15 -0700

Developer relations is the combination of activities, programs and tactics to get developers using or developing for your organization’s product or ecosystem. The goal of a good developer relations team is often to make your organization’s product or ecosystem the first choice for developers. (You may be doing this just to sell more of your product or you may be doing this because you believe your product’s mission helps make the world a better place. You are still trying to get more developers using your product.)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of why I don't always work in the open

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 12:00:28 -0700

I was writing a post about why you must work in the open to get more volunteers and I ended up writing this post about why I don’t work in the open.

The Good

So I think there are some very valid reasons for not working in the open:

Personal. Not all projects are open source projects, especially personal ones. Where I’m going for Valentine’s Day or how to get my son to do better in school are not “open” projects. They could be, but they’re not.
Not mine to share. There’s a lot of things I think should be shared with the world but they aren’t my stories or plans to share. I’d be violating someone else’s sense of privacy in order to share. I think your 2015 project goals are good enough to share with the world - and more people would join if you did - but you may not feel the same way.
It’s not an open source project. Lots of projects in this world are not run in an open source way. If you are not looking to build a community, and you are not an open source software project nor a nonprofit nor a public entity, I think this is a totally valid way of working.

The Bad

And then I think there are some reasonable reasons (maybe right, maybe not) for not working in the open:

7 reasons asynchronous communication is better than synchronous communication in open source

Mon, 26 Jan 2015 16:45:32 -0700

Traditionally, open source software has relied primarily on asynchronous communication. While there are probably quite a few synchronous conversations on irc, most project discussions and decisions will happen on asynchronous channels like mailing lists, bug tracking tools and blogs.

I think there’s another reason for this.Â Synchronous communication is difficult for an open source project. For any project where people are distributed. Synchronous conversations are:

Inconvenient. It’s hard to schedule synchronous meetings across time zones. Just try to pick a good time for Australia, Europe and California.
Logistically difficult. It’s hard to schedule a meeting for people that are working on a project at odd hours that might vary every day depending on when they can fit in their hobby or volunteer job.
Slower. If you have more than 2-3 people you need to get together every time you make a decision, things will move slower. I currently have a project right now that we are kicking off and the team wants to do everything in meetings. We had a meeting last week and one this week. Asynchronously we could have had several rounds of discussion by now.
Expensive for many people. When I first started at GNOME, it was hard to get some of our board members on a phone call. They couldn’t call international numbers, or couldn’t afford an international call and they didn’t have enough bandwidth for an internet voice call. We ended up using a conference call line from one of our sponsor companies. Now it’s video.
Logistically difficult. Mozilla does most of our meetings as video meetings. Video is still really hard for many people. Even with my pretty expensive, supposedly high end internet in a developed country, I often have bandwidth problems when participating in video calls. Now imagine I’m a volunteer from Nigeria. My electricity might not work all the time, much less my high speed internet.
Language. Open source software projects work primarily in English and most of the world does not speak English as their first language. Asynchronous communication gives them a chance to compose their messages, look up words and communicate more effectively.
Confusing. Discussions and decisions are often made by a subset of the project and unless the team members are veryÂ diligent the decisions and rationale are often not communicated out broadly or effectively. You lose the history behind decisions that way too.

There are some major benefits toÂ synchronous conversation:

Book Review: The Starfish and the Spider & Open source software organizations and money

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:13:38 -0700

The Starfish and the Spider compares two types of organizational structures. Spider organizations have a central command structure, like a CEO. If you detach one of the spider’s legs from the head, the leg can no longer function. It is not autonomous. Starfish organizations have very distributed command structures. Cut off a leg and it will continue to function and will even grow other legs and turn into its own starfish. Each type of organization has its benefits and drawbacks and each are useful at different times. One key to success is understanding what type of organization you are in, its strengths and weaknesses and when you might want to act more like the other type. Hybrids are also possible. For example, GE Â under Jack Welsh transitioned from a spider to a spider/starfish. Traditional companies tend to be more like spider organizations and open source software projects tend to be more like starfish.

Does open source exclude high context cultures?

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:50:14 -0700

High context cultures value personal relationships over process. You have to know someone before you can trust them and work with them. They also tend to be less explicit and rely more on tone of voice, gestures and even status to communicate. Typically Asian countries are more high context than Western countries. Think Korea and Japan.

Low context cultures are process driven. They rely on facts and processes. Their communication style is much more direct and action-orientated. They are orientated towards the individual rather than the group. Western cultures like the US and Germany are considered low context.

Forking an open source project: regaining internal motivation

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 09:02:56 -0700

Can forking a free software project enable you to regain your internal motivation to work on a project? My current theory is that if you work on free software, then you get paid to work on it and then you get laid off, that you would work on a different project. Because the first one is no longer good enough to get paid, then it must not be good enough to work on for free.

How do I raise enough money to work on my project full time?

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:52:48 -0700

“How do I raise enough money to be able to spend all my time working on my favorite free software project?” is a question I hear often.

I have a few ideas and I’m very interested in hearing others as I think the world would be a better place if we all could afford to do work we loved and thought useful.

Focus on the difference you’d make. First off, I wouldn’t approach it as “I need to raise money to pay myself.” Unless you are raising moneyÂ solelyÂ from people that love you, whether or not you get paid is probably not going to sway them one way or the other. You need to tell them what $100,000 a year would do. How would your project be great then? Who would it help? How would it make the world a better place? How would it help this particular type of sponsor?
Believe it. You need toÂ trulyÂ believe your project would benefit from the money and your work. If you aren’t convinced, you won’t convince anyone else.
Figure out how much you need. It helps to have a goal. Would you quit your day job if you had $20,000 in funding? $100,000? $200,000? (Don’t forget costs like health care, vacation time, etc.)
Identify different types of sponsors. Are you going to raise money from developers? Or software companies? Or philanthropic grant givers? Also think about how much money that type of sponsor is likely to give. Be realistic. Maybe they gave a project $100,000 once but they gave five other projects $10,000. You are probably going to get $10,000 if you get anything. Then figure out how many sponsors you’ll need. Figure out where those people are and how you are going to get introduced to them.
Create a pitch. You need a really good web page, a good email, an elevator pitch and unfortunately, you probably need a slide deck too.
Tell the world. Don’t ask everyone for money. But tell everyone about your project and what your goals are. (Hint: your goal is not to raise money but to make your project better. The money is a means to an end.) Use your elevator pitch. Listen carefully to their questions, their skepticism, their ideas. Evolve. Make your pitch better. Figure out how to pitch it to different types of people.
Sell your project. Don’t forget to talk about your project. You aren’t just asking for money, you are selling the potential of your project.
Collect stories. Studies have proven that people are willing to give more money to save one child identified by name and ailment than they are to save 100 kids. Personal stories are moving. Find a couple of stories of how your project has made a difference.
Learn about them. You are not going to get any money from someone whom you don’t understand. Know them, know their business, know what they care about, know how they view you.
Work with an organization that can help. For example, maybe you want money to work on your favorite project and you found companies that are willing to sponsor it but they don’t want to manage it. Would they be willing to funnel the money to you through a nonprofit organization that also supports your type of project?
Ask. Talk to lots of potential sponsors, ask them for money, apply for grants, look for opportunities. If you don’t ask for the money, you will never get it.

What else would you recommend?

Putting all the Hackfest pieces together

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:54:50 -0700

Planning a hackfest is not an easy process. You need an:

organizer - someone willing to put some time into making the whole thing happen
topic - what are you going to be hacking on, what do you hope to accomplish
attendees - this is usually a particular group of people that work on a specific project or team
date - have you ever tried to schedule a multi-day meeting with multiple people? Agreeing on a week can be really hard.
place - a place with affordable lodging and food with a comfortable place to hack with great internet. Preferably some place easy and cheap to travel to.
sponsors - flying a group of people to the same place often costs quite a bit of money

Luckily we’ve had people and companies willing to invest the time and resources to make this happen. During the past year we’ve had a record number of very productive hackfests and we have even more coming up!

Words are important - just not always the way you think

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:39:45 -0700

Recently I met someone who insisted on describing every department in his organization, all the acronyms and what they stood for. By the time he got around to describing how this whole thing related to me, he had lost my interest. (And I tried hard to hang in there!) He had given me too many irrelevant terms that didn’t relate to me.

We focus a lot in the free software community about what words we use: free software, open source software, free and open source software, …

10 skills to master to get things done online

Fri, 14 May 2010 10:14:20 -0700

I’ve recently watched a few people struggle to get things done in online projects. I’ve written and spoken on 12 tips for getting things done in the open source community but now I see that people also need to learn how to work with mailing lists and virtual teams.

Skills you should master if you plan on working in a virtual environment. I’m interested in any other skills you’d add to the list.

10 free apps I wish were open source

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:28:01 -0700

When it comes to web applications, I think free and open source software fans are settling for “free” instead of looking for the freedom they would get from open source.

Here are some free applications that I wish had open source software equivalents.Â I am not unhappy with these applications. I just wish I had open source software alternatives that were as good!

Here are 10 of the good web applications that I use daily that don’t have good enough open source software equivalents.

How does Malaysia encourage so many women in software?

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:28:37 -0700

In 2003 I gave a talk in Malaysia. What I noticed immediately is that my audience was well over half women. This was really noticeable because they were all wearing brightly colored hijabs. Usually I scan the room and count how many women I can find - usually on my fingers even in a room of hundreds. Yet here were hundreds of women attending a talk about the economics of open source software!

More Women in GNOME Now!

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:52:44 -0700

The GNOME community is extremely diverse when it comes to nationality. But we don’t have many women working on GNOME.

We want to make sure that women interested in working on GNOME know they are welcome, so we have announced the

GNOME Outreach Program for Women!

The goal is to encourage women to participate in GNOME and to provide internship opportunities in the summer.

We noticed a problem back in 2006. We had 181 submissions for Google’s Summer of Code - and not one was from a woman. So Hanna Wallach and Chris Ball launched the Women’s Summer Outreach Program. We received a 100 applications from women that summer and were able to accept 6 - six women were paid to work on GNOME and mentored by GNOME developers. (Sponsored primarily with a grant from Google.) Recently Marina Zhurakhinskaya followed up with those women and decided we should do it again and expand on the program.

Should you ask developers for money? And other interesting fundraising dilemnas.

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:36:22 -0700

Chris Blizzard introduced me to Clay Johnson. I had such an interesting time talking to him about social networking, free and open source software, governments and fundraising that I asked if he’d share some of his points in a blog interview.

Meet Clay Johnson, Director of Sunlight Labs!

Hi Clay, you have a lot of experience with online social networking. Where’d you get that experience? It’s weird– I started out with social networking before social networking was called “social networking.” In college, back in the early days of the web, my Dad would always ask me to look things up on the Internet for him. I began to get tired of answering questions, so I built a service that would let people ask questions and answer them online– that way, I figured, he could have a whole community of people answering his questions. That was KnowPost.com, the first “social network” I built on my own. A few years later, I found myself working on the same kind of project with some friends called ZeroDegrees.com, which was a social networking service built into Outlook. And shortly thereafter, the Howard Dean Campaign hired me to be their lead programmer and build Dean Link, a privately branded social network. Then quickly found myself starting the company that created My.BarackObama.com– yet another social network.

What's your vision of GNOME?

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:47:08 -0700

The GNOME Foundation’s mission is to provide a free desktop accessible to everyone. Accessible regardless of their ability to pay, their physical ability or the language they speak.

But I bet if you polled all 400 members of the GNOME Foundation and a few 1000 GNOME fans, you’d get a lot of different visions of what that means. And while I think that’s normal and I think that’s good, I thought it might be an interesting conversation to have.

Can free software transition to the web services world?

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 07:52:57 -0700

Etherpad is being released as open source software because the team is moving onto Google Wave. As an open source web hosted project, without a company behind it, it is unlikely to succeed.

Back when I used to talk about the business reasons for open sourcing code, “end-of-life” was always one of my first examples. People think, “oh, I have this project that I no longer want to work on but people still want to use it, so I’ll open source it!” They have the (often mistaken) idea that somebody out there will just start working on it.

How companies leave the community out of the conversation

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:44:59 -0700

This morning I tried to attend a webinar, The Open Source Community vs. Patent Trolls - Preserving Developer Freedom. I knew the webinar was hosting on software that wouldn’t work on Linux, GoToMeeting. (Actually, who knows if it will work on Linux. The web page checks your operating system and if you are on Linux, it won’t even try.) I thought I’d just dialin. No such luck, you have to dialin to the webinar (on a Windows or Mac) in order to get the code for the phone.

How to plan a hackfest

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:00:00 -0700

hackfest n. A meeting where developers gather together in person to work on a free software project.

Hackfests are one of the ways that things get done on free software projects like GNOME. They get lots of good work done, they energize teams and raise visibility of the project and its mission.

The free software community is great at getting things done in a virtual environment. Large projects can fix bugs, add new features and put out regular releases without ever meeting over the phone or in person. However, there are some things that can be done much more quickly in person, such as design discussions or future plans. For example, according to Seif Lotfy, at a recent meeting at the openSUSE conference, the Zeitgeist team accomplished in 4 hours what would have taken them several weeks to decide on mailing lists and IRC channels. A conversation around a whiteboard or even a piece of paper can clear up a lot of misunderstandings and get a lot of work done quickly.

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.

Open source is (still) changing the way work gets done

Sat, 30 May 2009 12:41:52 -0700

[The beginnings of a keynote. Feedback and input welcome.]

Open source is changing the way work gets done. Yeah, yeah, what’s new? We all know that. But really, free and open source software has changed the software industry in the past but it’s really changing things now. Especially when you look at industries that are now using open source software that didn’t used to be in the software business: cell phones, netbooks, medical equipment, …

Supporting free software with grant money

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 08:00:11 -0700

I recently started investigating how GNOME could fund projects with grant money. Will Ross sent me an email with a lot of good information and I’d like to share his experience with others in the open source software community.

**Will Ross is a project manager with Mendocino Informatics, a small healthcare technology consulting firm in Mendocino County, California. Prior to Mendocino Informatics, Will was CTO for a consortium of nonprofit community clinics, and before that worked on the network infrastructure teams for two Bay Area dot-coms that didn’t fail (Organic Online & LoudCloud). Will spent the 90s as CIO for a mail order company and writing SQL queries for a multinational manufacturing company.

Dries Buytaert's rules for creating a great community

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:16:06 -0700

At OSBC last week I saw a great presentation by Dries Buytaert on how to build community. Dries is the founder of Drupal. The slides for his presentation (20 MB) include “Dries’ 7 secrets” which I’ll write about here.

Dries started out by showing us how the Drupal community really is a community excited about Drupal. He had pictures of people carrying around cutouts of people that couldn’t attend a conference, hand made Drupal socks, Drupal cookies, etc. He then went on to give his “rules” for creating community:

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.

Open source enables companies to collaborate

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:37:26 -0700

*Dave Neary gave me his speaking slot at OSiM USA. I have two challenges, make a talk to fit his title and abstract (although you can almost always safely ignore the abstract) and give a good talk in 20 minutes of time. Here are some thoughts I have. (The title of the talk is Increasing Ecosystem Collaboration through Open Source but I’ll let Dave blog that talk.) *

Open source software has proved that collaboration between individuals, regardless of geography, time and management structures, can work really well. The open source software model works:

5 types of company open source relationships

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:19:14 -0700

Companies and communities is a topic I’ll speaking on at SCALE. I welcome any feedback or points to consider!

First off, there is no ideal company/community relationship. There are lots of different types of relationships between companies and the communities they work with (or don’t work with) - and no one way is perfect for everyone.

The goal should be for companies and individuals who use and support open source software to work effectively together. And part of working effectively together means making sure that the open source model is sustainable. Which means interacting for the good of the project, not just taking or using open source software.

12 tips to getting things done in open source

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 10:27:28 -0700

Most people used to the proprietary software world, with no experience in open source software, are amazed that anything gets done. (And lots gets done in the open source, way more than in most proprietary software companies!) And people new to open source are usually at a loss as to where to start. Often they come with a great idea, tell a couple of people who confirm it’s a great idea, and then … well, and then they don’t know what to do and the great idea fades.

2.4 million more open source desktop users

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:14:12 -0700

According to Stephen Vaughan-Nichols there will be 2.4 million more Linux desktop users by the end of the year. And that’s only counting Eee PC users.

To be exact, according to Asustek, “The company shipped 2.5 million notebooks in the first half of this year, 1.7 million units in the third quarter and is expecting to ship 1.9 million units in the fourth quarter, bringing the company’s annual notebook shipments in 2008 to at least six million units.” Breaking that down by operating system, “The ratio of Eee PCs preloaded Windows XP and Linux stands at 7:3.”

Does money kill good motivations?

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:28:02 -0700

I get asked a lot about my “Would you do it again for free?” talk. (“Would you do it again for free” was about the question, if you take developers that are working on open source software for free and you pay them, if you stop paying them, will they still work on open source software?Â This was the topic of my keynote at GUADEC, LinuxConf Australia, and SCALE - the talk evolved over time. The next step is to communicate how companies can work effectively with communities.)

Social Norms vs Market Norms

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:01:00 -0700

Social norms govern whether you are willing to help a friend move or cook dinner for your family. Market norms govern what you are willing to do for how much money. In an experiment to show how social norms vary from market norms, Dan Ariely created a computer task where volunteers had to drag circles into boxes. He then divided his volunteers into 3 groups.

Group 1 got $5.00.
Group 2 got either 50 cents or 10 cents.
Group 3 was asked to do him a favor.

Not surprisingly, group 1 - the highest paid group - outperformed group 2, but group 3 - the volunteer group - outperformed them all.

Fundraising for a technical nonprofit

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:53:56 -0700

The GNOME Foundation is a nonprofit organization, a 501(c)(3), and is funded by donations from individuals and companies. So as executive director of the GNOME Foundation I figured I should learn a bit more about fund raising.

While there are a lot of books about fund raising, there’s very little information out there about fund raising for technical nonprofits. And technical nonprofits really don’t fit the traditional nonprofit model. (Anybody up for a telephone drive where you call all your friends and relatives and explain what great things we’re doing and ask for donations? Not.)

Afraid you'll get sued for using open source software? Think again.

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:54:22 -0700

I gave a talk at LinuxWorld called “Avoiding Open Source Lawsuits: Five Steps to Effective Open Source Governance in the Enterprise.” I suppose it wasn’t the wisest title since my point was to dispell FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) not create FUD. (I borrowed the title (and a few slides) from an OpenLogic webinar, although my talk was substantially different.)

The point of my talk was that although I think there’s very little chance you’ll get sued for using open source software, if you (or your manager) are worried about it, there’s a few things you can do to dispell those fears. (My goal is to convince more people to use open source software by dispelling myths and giving people tools to convince the opposition.) By having clear policies and processes for dealing with open source software, a company can ensure that not only will they not be doing anything they could be sued for, but if they are sued (or just approached by someone like the SFLC), they can show them that they were doing their best to comply with open source licenses. If you show you are doing the right thing, open source developers and those that represent them are more likely to help you straighten things out than they are to sue you. Open source software developers in general want their software to be used!

Sugar (the software on OLPC) and my conversation with Walter Bender

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:54:28 -0700

I had a good conversation with Walter Bender, former president of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and the founder of Sugar Labs. Sugar is the software that comes on OLPCs. It also comes in some of the Linux distributions like Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora and can run on most laptops.

Walter is interested in how Sugar Labs can make Sugar successful. He wants to make Sugar successful because Sugar helps computers be effective in education by providing a user interface for kids that promotes “sharing, collaborative learning, and reflection.” It’s currently used by half a million kids world-wide through OLPCs but there are a lot more kids out there.

7 of the most common open source myths

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:49:00 -0700

Here are some of the misunderstandings around open source software that I hear every day. Feel free to add your own!

The most important thing is whether you modify the code or not. I keep hearing from people, “we’re ok because we didn’t modify it.” Or they create a policy that doesn’t allow anyone to modify open source code because then they think they are risk free. I agree, modifying open source software may cause a support problem, but it isn’t what triggers anything special in the license. The GPL says that if you make modifications to the software, you have to distribute those modified source code files with your binaries. But it is the distribution that triggers that clause, not the modification. So if you distributed the binaries unmodified, you’d have to distribute the source code. And if you linked statically to those GPLed binaries, you’d have to distribute your source code as well. But only if you distributed your product. If you are using it in house, it really doesn’t matter whether you modified it or not. Except from a support perspective.
If you modify GPL code, you have to give the modifications back to the project. I highly recommend you do give your modifications back - it’s the nice, neighborly thing to do. It also makes your life easier to be using the standard version and not your own forked version. However, you don’t have to give those modifications back. You only have to give the modified source code to anyone you give the binaries too. Now note that they can give that modified source code to anyone they want, which brings me to the next point.
Distributing GPL code under an NDA does not count as distribution. I’m not an attorney, and it hasn’t been taken to court yet, but I thinkÂ most attorneys would agree with me that distributing GPL code under an NDA not only counts as distribution but the recipient can give that GPL product to anyone they want to under the terms of the NDA regardless of what your NDA says. It’s not a risk I would take.
**If you are only using open source software internally, you don’t have to worry. ** First I’d argue that nothing used internally stays internal - what if you share with a partner or sell a group to another company. That said, many licenses have clauses that trigger on something other than distribution. Sometimes they are simple, sometimes they aren’t. For example, one says that you have to buy a copy of the book for everyÂ developer on the team. Regardless of whether you redistribute or not.
Anybody can sue me for using open source wrongly. Only the person that owns the copyright for a piece of software can sue you for violating the license. Typically, the person that owns the copyright is the person that wrote the code. They can however give that copyright away. They can even give it away and keep it for themselves so that two people hold the copyright. The copyright holder is also the only person that can change the license on a piece of software. (Note that this is why SCO lost - in the end the court ruled that SCO didn’t hold the Unix copyright.)
There is no support for open source. First off,Â lots and lots of products are open source. The support options vary widely from the do it yourself variety to multiple companies competing for your business. The problem is you have to do a lot of research - the products’ name doesn’t give you a direct clue to the company that supports it. And you might come up with more than one name and have to compare several companies. But there are lots of people and companies out there supporting open source software.
Freeware and Shareware are open source. FreewareÂ and shareware are not open source. All things free are not open source. Just because it’s free, doesn’t mean it’s open source. The freeware and shareware licenses are very different and do not meet any of the traditional open source guidelines like providing source code, allowing modification and redistribution.

Got any others?