How to make open source software

And they need to be sociable so they can convey enthusiasm, knowledge, and information to others and help them understand how the open source initiative is going to transform, change, and improve things for the company. In the spirit of open source collaboration, a plethora of online resources exists to help find the best candidates including detailed sample job description postings for open source program managers and other leaders from a variety of companies that established such roles, including Capital One, Box, VMware, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo.

The budget, staffing, and technology tools and systems needed by a new program office are also key issues to resolve in establishing its operations. Some companies begin with a part-time manager, but learn they will only get so far with that approach.

You want to keep developers and open source communities within the company in the process as much as possible. Outsized offices allow others to defer issues to the program office rather than resolving them on their own. An example of a well-defined open source program office is one that drives needed policy, processes and tools, while also operating with a mantra of eliminating friction where it is found, using tools to automate what can be streamlined, and delegating tasks which need to be accomplished.

A program office must offer structured policies and processes but also remain flexible. When open source users and contributors need help, the office operates more like a consultancy, providing guidance while still allowing employees to make individual or group business decisions relating to their work.

Ultimately, the goal is to establish the right balance of duties and responsibilities to meet the needs of your company and its open source users. Because it will have a central role in your business, creating it successfully will require open and honest input and feedback from all involved parties inside enterprises. Making sure that everyone from the executives to the developers have a say in its creation will help give the effort broad-based support. Keep your process as streamlined as possible to focus on those things and then on top of that, automate as much as you possibly can.

Should it be inside the engineering department? For companies that have large intellectual property portfolios, that could mean the open source program office might be a perfect fit in the legal office, where developers can work closely with the legal team on issues that arise. Other companies are more engineering-driven, so they choose to maintain their open source program offices within their engineering departments.

That allows them to focus their efforts directly on making their developers more effective and productive in their work. In other cases, some open source offices are located inside the marketing wing of organizations because they use open source to funnel leads aimed at selling the products they build using open source.

The result was the hiring of an open source program manager and the creation of an open source program office to fix processes, streamline procedures, bring in tools to automate tasks and make other needed changes. Instead, the streaming movie and entertainment company organizes its open source use through a small, cross-functional working group that runs an internal mailing list for discussions and meets informally once a month to help each other resolve open source issues.

The volunteer working group members assist other decentralized teams, leaving everyone with less need to focus on administrative tasks such as legal issues, tools, monitoring and community promotion. At Microsoft, the structure of its open source program office, which is inside its engineering department, is unique because it has some 60, software engineers to support. That large number of developers required a move away from the idea that the details of all open source projects would have to go through one centralized office, which would have been overwhelmed and unworkable.

About different groups of business and legal reviewers are available to weigh in on the localized requests with their expertise, helping to provide a workable approach for the company through a highly specialized process.

Those are fundamentally different businesses. We give engineers the tools and guidance to enable their work, but are not a central approval body. That works in some companies but would not work here. That would give them the tools they need to lead the way inside an enterprise toward its open source goals and vision.

Microsoft uses an Open Source Executive Council, which is similar to a review board. The group, which is made up of vice presidents from all the major business units inside the company, provides board of directors-style guidance on policy changes and introductions, sets priorities for the open source program, and assists in driving changes in behavior.

Like every other function inside a company, legal teams must have a say in the operations of the open source program office to ensure compliance with laws, open source licensing agreements, and other legal details. Specific to open source, the legal team needs to be responsible for ensuring that a company can consume code internally and contribute back to projects with acceptable terms.

Larger organizations should consider hiring or training a dedicated attorney to advise their open source program. But you could also use a part-time, knowledgeable staff member or outside counsel. It is often helpful to work with an attorney who is knowledgeable and experienced with open source licensing and IP as it can be a specialized, and at times baffling, legal domain relative to commercial contracts or standards.

The open source compliance team is a cross-disciplinary group consisting of various individuals tasked with the mission of ensuring open source compliance. The core team, often called the Open Source Review Board OSRB , consists of representatives from engineering and product teams, one or more legal counsel, and the compliance officer who is often the open source program manager.

The extended team consists of various individuals across multiple departments that contribute on an ongoing basis to the compliance efforts. However, unlike the core team, members of the extended team are only working on compliance on a part-time basis, based on tasks they receive from the OSRB.

Evangelists often go to conferences and tech events and explain what open source is to help audiences understand how it can be used and what challenges and opportunities it offers, while sharing their corporate experiences with the open source community.

In addition, the creation of other job roles is important for the success of the open source program office, including tool administrators, training managers, integration developers for tools and systems, deployment support staffers, implementation project leads, and open source evangelists.

Tool administrators, for example, are needed to help select, provide and integrate needed tools for engineers working on their open source projects, while also ensuring the tools meet the licensing and other requirements of an enterprise.

The policies should lay out the requirements and rules for working with open source across the company, as well as documented and executable processes which will ensure the rules are followed on a day-to-day basis. Crucially, they should require minimal overhead.

Microsoft looks at its open source program office policies and processes with the goal of making them as unobtrusive as possible for developers and other team members. The approach is to repeatedly eliminate, automate and delegate when reviewing existing open source policies and processes so the rules are constantly questioned and updated to streamline procedures.

That means asking why policies are even in place and how they can be improved for users. Otherwise you get lawyers, security folks, business folks, all piling in their concerns and constraints. Soon you end up with a strait jacket full of policy that basically means that nobody can do anything. Even as those rules are carefully created for open source program offices, companies must be prepared to evolve and modify the rules and procedures as needed over time as their businesses change and as their open source engagements mature and grow.

But today there are ways to profit from building open source software OSS. Lately, developers have started thinking about how to monetize their OSS.

We're going to highlight a few common ways to make profits from open source software. One way to monetize your open source project is by using the SaaS business model. This option makes sense if you have a fully-fledged application capable of generating demand.

What makes SaaS attractive is that the software is stored in the cloud; users only need a web browser to access an application. SaaS is a popular business model for vendors that build tools for HR, collaboration, content management, and project management. SaaS solutions with a free codebase reduce development costs and eliminate the need to build redundant functionality. Additionally, the vibrant OSS community will gladly promote quality open source products. With an OpenSaaS model, software is purchased via subscriptions, which can offer varying levels of service.

For example, you might offer technical support, software customization, and trainings as package options. The SaaS version of WordPress can be found at wordpress. If you choose this service, then WordPress hosts your application for you. Sharetribe, a marketplace builder, is another great example of an OpenSaaS product.

It comes in two versions: a self-hosted free version which can be found on GitHub, and a cloud-based hosted version at sharetribe. But while the SaaS version receives great support and additional offerings like custom domain and removal of Sharetribe branding, this version of Sharetribe is less customizable, only allowing you to personalize marketplace filters and change colors, images, and block position in the user interface.

With the open source version of Sharetribe, on the other hand, the customer has to deploy Sharetribe on their own server and run updates and backups themselves. OpenSaaS is an exciting new trend that combines the best of both worlds, allowing people to build web experiences more easily than ever. Such as technical support, certifications, and trainings. In fact, most professional open source companies — including Red Hat, JBoss, and MySQl — have built their entire business by providing free solutions.

They generate profits only from additional services. The most common way to get revenue from OSS is to provide paid support. Red Hat sets the bar for this model, boasting substantial revenue.

In , the company — widely known for its enterprise operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux — announced a profit of 2. Red Hat does admirably by selling yearly subscriptions for user and technical support. Customers can choose a subscription plan based on number of requests, severity of requests, support channels and hours of coverage. MySQL, the leading open source database, derives revenue from selling support subscriptions for their product. Paid support is an effective tool for making profit from open source for a few reasons.

First, enterprise owners can save money on their payroll. But in the case of open source, the community isn't just a fanbase that buys in emotionally or financially to an elite user group; it's the people who produce, test, use, promote, and ultimately affect the software they love.

This is a common misconception about what "open source" implies, and the concept's implications are not only economic. Open source software programmers can charge money for the open source software they create or to which they contribute. But in some cases, because an open source license might require them to release their source code when they sell software to others, some programmers find that charging users money for software services and support rather than for the software itself is more lucrative.

This way, their software remains free of charge, and they make money helping others install, use, and troubleshoot it. While some open source software may be free of charge, skill in programming and troubleshooting open source software can be quite valuable. Many employers specifically seek to hire programmers with experience working on open source software. At Opensource.

We like to think of open source as not only a way to develop and license computer software, but also an attitude. Approaching all aspects of life " the open source way " means expressing a willingness to share, collaborating with others in ways that are transparent so that others can watch and join too , embracing failure as a means of improving, and expecting—even encouraging—everyone else to do the same.

It also means committing to playing an active role in improving the world, which is possible only when everyone has access to the way that world is designed. The world is full of "source code"— blueprints , recipes , rules —that guide and shape the way we think and act in it.

We believe this underlying code whatever its form should be open, accessible, and shared—so many people can have a hand in altering it for the better. Here, we tell stories about the impact of open source values on all areas of life— science , education , government , manufacturing , health, law, and organizational dynamics. We're a community committed to telling others how the open source way is the best way, because a love of open source is just like anything else: it's better when it's shared.

We've compiled several resources designed to help you learn more about open source. We recommend you read our open source FAQs, how-to guides, and tutorials to get started. What is open source software? What is open source? Get the highlights in your inbox every week. Open source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance. What's the difference between open source software and other types of software?

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