This document discusses best practices for open source software engagement. It covers two main strategies - joining an existing community or building a new community. Joining an existing community has benefits like lower costs but it can be challenging to influence projects. Building a new community allows for more control but requires more resources. Best practices for both include communicating vision, making contributions easy, and avoiding too much control of the community. Open source engagement works best when it is a two-way relationship where companies contribute code back.

1. Open Source Engagement – Best
Practices
CLOUD EXPO EUROPE 2011 Gyanee Dewnarain
Version v1.0 Marketing Director
2 Feb 2010
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2. Topics
• Introduction to LiMo
• Industry Trends
• Rationale for using OSS
• Types of community engagement
• Pros and cons of community engagement strategies
• Best practices
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3. Introduction
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4. Prominence of Mobile Companies Amongst
Contributors to the Linux Kernel
• Besides the usual suspects: Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, IBM and Intel
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/docs/lf_linux_kernel_development_2010.pdf 4

5. Rationale for OSS Engagement
Reduced
cost of
software
acquisition
Economic
Benefits of
Open
Source
Reduced
Access to
cost of
software
software
innovation
ownership
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6. Understand Your Objectives for Engaging with OSS
Marketing Engineering Support
Business Development Business Efficiencies 6

7. Community Engagement Strategies
Joining an Existing Building a New
Community Community
BlueZ
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8. Joining An Existing Community
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9. Joining An Existing Community
Lower Cost of
Acquisition &
Cost of Ownership
Faster Product
Realisation
Challenging to influence the
direction of the project &
Time to Build align it to your own business
Trust & agenda
Reputation
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10. Joining An Existing Community - Best Practices
Seek to understand the structure of the
community
Choose the right person to represent your
organisation
Follow the norms, guidelines and policies
of the Community
Let people shine in their own rights
http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2011/01/open-source-community-building-a-guide-to-getting-it-right/print/ 10

11. Building a New Community
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12. Building A New Community
Industry
Leadership
Good Reputation
Growing a community
around a new project can be
Broad Adoption Costly & Time-Consuming
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13. Building A New Community - Best Practices
Create a fair community
Avoid controlling the project & “dumping”
Communicate the vision
Make it easy for people to contribute
http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2011/01/open-source-community-building-a-guide-to-getting-it-right/print/ 13

14. Conclusion
• No perfect recipe for successful community engagement.
o But several aspects need to be taken into account when joining or building a community:
licensing, governance, culture, community dynamics, alignments between commercial
products and community development etc
• Open Source engagement needs to be bilateral.
o You can influence the direction of the project by actively working patches back into
community source.
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16. Image references:
• http://cache4.asset-cache.net/xc/200418487-002.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=5047
• http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Politics/Pix/columnist_thumbnails/2009/10/29/1256
• http://www.uipatent.com/marketing.jpg
• http://og-consulting.com/files/images/puerta_open_sm.jpg
• http://www.arunoffice.com/images/cost_management.jpg
• http://blogs.livetime.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/cost_savings.png
• http://www.pjcj.net/yapc/yapc-eu-2006-enigmatic_perl/slides/images/stopwatch.jpg
• http://www.crederitylabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/fotolia_696167_online-trust+bus
• http://www.literateweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Guidelines-for-Writing.jpg
• http://www.frontiernet.net/~ingallsw/pix/luna_sea_shine.jpg
• http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSctHXExli1x9Bny2wozTsQkfoXrOEHmusaB
• http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/online-reputation.jpg
• http://news.pinkpaper.com/uploads/justice-scale.jpg
• http://www.theautismdirectory.com/community-contribute.jpg
• http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/images/articles/vision-steps.gif
• http://company.neurosky.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Maintenance_Green-300x300.p
• http://marketingassassin.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/self-control.jpg
• http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/73861/PublishingImages/site/leadership.jpg
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