Community Engagement

Community Engagement Sander van der Waal Development Officer - OSS Watch http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk [email_address]

Agenda
OSS Watch
Engagement with Hadoop
Community
Shameless plug

About OSS Watch http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk

OSS Watch – what we do
Advice on all things open source
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Consultancy, events, presentations, community development
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Briefing notes, surveys, case studies, blog posts
Free to UK Higher and Further Education

Engagement with Hadoop How many of you have experienced these issues with Hadoop?
Deployment issues
Applying it to a specific use case
Customising locally

Engagement with Hadoop How many of you are engaging with the Hadoop community to solve your problems?
Ask on the mailing list
Contribute your solution
Customisation / new functionality

"The real value of open source software is that it allows communities to work together and solve problems" - Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Head of IBM's e-business on demand initiative http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail495.html Community

Who is this “community”?
Users
Students, researchers , Institutional IT staff, Commercial IT staff
Contributors
Students, researchers , Institutional IT staff, Commercial IT staff
Maintainers
Students, researchers, Institutional IT staff, Commercial IT staff

Why does this community care?
Open source is driven by user need
Without user feedback the project is blind
Assisting users ensures the user community expands
A large user community becomes self supporting
Some users become contributors
Some contributors become maintainers
Users = sustainability

Long term sustainability
It's all about the users
no users means no contributors
no contributors means no developers
no developers means no development
no development means no future prospect of attracting users
No users means no business opportunities
No business justification means no development
No users means no project

Engaging with the community Evangelism Requirements Support Bugs Use Documentation Design Code Contribute Strategy Legal Oversight Manage

Community only needs four tools
Coordination through collaboration
Web site
http://hadoop.apache.org or http://hadoop.a.o/sub_project
Communication
Hadoop mailing lists
Issue Tracker
http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP
Version Control
Publicly accessible Subversion repository

Mailing Lists / Forums
Asynchronous (Supports geographic distribution)
Decision making
Problem solving
Support
Project Memory (Archives)
Don't repeat yourself
Don't forget why a decision was made
Prior art record

Communications (forums / mailing lists)
New user support
Installation
Customisation
Course development
Course delivery
Developer support
Design
Implementation
Maintainers
Strategy
Legal

Issue Tracker
Project planning
What will be done
What may be done
What will not be done
IPR management
Who contributed what

Benefits - Long term sustainability
Do you have skill retention plans?
“We've just lost our team for the second time in a year”
Do you have local customisations?
Are they compatible with future version of Hadoop?
Can you upgrade quickly and cheaply?
“ we made a decision not to upgrade”
“ we tried to upgrade but....”

Local specialisation
Engaging with external community extends and preserves project memory beyond internal staff
Allowing local installations to diverge from new developments can be dangerous
Local customisations should be contributed back
It's cheaper for you and helps secure the future of the project

What about regional communities?
Sub-optimal as limited expertise
May not contain Hadoop committers
Can be more “comfortable”
Makes physical meetings easier
Can be effective “first level support”
But be aware of allowing bad practice to go unchecked

Regional support caveats
Public archives of lists
Open subscription
Encourage commercial participants
If regional expertise is unsure defer to the official project support
Don't duplicate effort
Point to and contribute to central resources

Shameless plug: OSS Watch Conference
TransferSummit/UK 2010
24/25 June 2010 - Keble College, Oxford
Open innovation / Case studies / Business and Community
Improve collaboration between academia and business
http://www.transfersummit.com

Shameless plug: OSS Watch BarCamp
26 June 2010 – University Club, Oxford
Interactive informal discussions and meetups
Find out about each other's OSS projects
BarCamp >> active participation encouraged

Come along!
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk
[email_address]

Community Engagement

by Steve Loughran

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