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 […]
Open source enables companies to collaborate Read More »
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
5 types of company open source relationships Read More »
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
12 tips to getting things done in open source Read More »
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
2.4 million more open source desktop users Read More »
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
Does money kill good motivations? Read More »
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
Social Norms vs Market Norms Read More »
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
Fundraising for a technical nonprofit Read More »
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
Afraid you’ll get sued for using open source software? Think again. Read More »
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 (the software on OLPC) and my conversation with Walter Bender Read More »
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
7 of the most common open source myths Read More »