Business

Building an open source business

In 2002 I was working for Oculan, a company that founded an open source network management application platform called OpenNMS. Oculan used this platform as the basis for a network management appliance, but my job was to create a services and support business around the platform itself.

In May, just after the release of OpenNMS version 1.0, Oculan got new investors, who decided to focus on the appliance and to stop working on OpenNMS.

I knew that without at least one person dedicated to OpenNMS it would die, and I wasn't ready to give up on it. So I went to the CEO and asked to become the administrator of the project. We talked for a bit, and then he looked at his watch and said that if I was off his payroll by Friday, he'd give me a couple of servers, the OpenNMS domain names, and his blessing to continue on with OpenNMS. » Read more

10 CommentsPosted 12 Mar 2010 by Tarus Balog

The Wikimedia Foundation: doing strategic planning the open source way

Earlier this week I wrote a post about some of the cultural challenges Wikipedia is facing as its contribution rate has slowed. The comments you made were fantastic, including one by Dr. Ed H Chi (the PARC scientist who published the study I referred to in the post) linking to a prototype dashboard his team created to showcase who is editing each Wikipedia page (totally fascinating—you have to go try it!) » Read more

7 CommentsPosted 11 Mar 2010 by Chris Grams

The open source renaissance

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cornelluniversitylibrary/3485960283/" target="blank">photo</a>

By Brian Gentile, Jaspersoft CEO

It occurred to me recently that the open source movement is really nothing less than a renaissance. Perhaps that sounds grandiose, but stay with me.
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4 CommentsPosted 10 Mar 2010 by Brian Gentile

Love, hate, and the Wikipedia contributor culture problem

Last fall, a group of researchers at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) released a study showing an abrupt leveling off in the number of editors and edits to Wikipedia, starting in about 2007. » Read more

20 CommentsPosted 8 Mar 2010 by Chris Grams

What's after Web 2.0? You. In 3D.

We recently sat down with Dr. Tony O'Driscoll, co-author of the book Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration, to talk about avatar-based Internet communities like SecondLife. Here's what he had to say about the way the Internet has evolved—and the business and industry culture changes that are happening as a result. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 5 Mar 2010 by Rebecca Fernandez (Red Hat)

Social production as a new source of economic value creation

In this short TED video clip, Yochai Benkler provides a useful framing of what he terms “social production.” » Read more

2 CommentsPosted 3 Mar 2010 by Tony O'Driscoll

Five questions about the future of music with David Pakman

Traditional media companies are in big trouble. You may have noticed. You know who else has noticed? David Pakman, currently a partner at the prestigious Venrock venture capital firm. You may also know David as the former CEO of eMusic—a fairly disruptive media company in its own right. David has over 300,000 Twitter followers and regularly blogs here about the “undoing of big media.”
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5 CommentsPosted 2 Mar 2010 by Chris Grams

Three tips for escaping the creativity peloton without giving up on collaboration

If you've ever watched a road bike race like the Tour de France, you know the peloton is the big group of riders that cluster together during the race to reduce drag. It's a great example of collaboration in action. But let's face it: the people in the middle of the peloton may go faster than they would otherwise, but they don't win the race.

When it comes to creating and innovating, most companies (and employees) are in the peloton. They are doing enough to survive, but they are stuck in the pack. And if they stay in the pack too long, they lose. » Read more

5 CommentsPosted 25 Feb 2010 by Chris Grams

A handbook for the open source way, written the open source way

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Kramer had the idea to make a coffee table book about coffee tables? I always thought that was a pretty elegant idea. Well, a few months ago, some of the smart folks on Red Hat's community architecture team had a similarly elegant idea:

Write a book about building community the open source way... and write it with a community, the open source way. Meaning, open the text up, allow interested users to contribute, and see what happens.

Brilliant. » Read more

6 CommentsPosted 22 Feb 2010 by Chris Grams