Ben Cotton

5063 points

Lafayette, Indiana

Ben Cotton is a meteorologist by training, but weather makes a great hobby. Ben works as the Fedora Program Manager at Red Hat. He is the author of Program Management for Open Source Projects. Find him on Twitter (@FunnelFiasco) or at FunnelFiasco.com.

Open Sourcerer People's Choice Award Moderator's Choice Award 2017 Author Comment Gardener Cloud Linux Open science Python SysAdmin Community Manager Creative Commons Developer Fedora Contributor Club Open Organization Ambassador

Authored Content

Why program management matters in open source

As your open source community grows or your technology becomes more complex, a skilled program manager will coordinate teams and people with intention.

How an open community rebrands

A community's brand is its visual identity, its logo a unifying symbol. How does a community rebrand in the open?

failure sign at a party, celebrating failure

Why making mistakes makes me a better sysadmin

The trick is to not make the same mistake twice.

How an open project's governance model evolves

As open projects mature, their governance models inevitably change. Here's how we're evolving ours.

a big flag flying in a sea of other flags, teamwork

How to scale an open, energetic community

Open communities are living, breathing entities that grow and change. Join us as we help one evolve.

New Linux integrity checker from Microsoft, Raspberry Pi smart TV replacement from KDE, and more open source news

Catch up on the biggest open source headlines from the past two weeks.

Contributed Content

How to make a lighted, porch bag for Halloween

20 technology horror stories about learning the hard way

Sysadmins, web designers, engineers, and programmers share their scariest experiences on the command line.

Announcing the Opensource.com Correspondent program

Top authors on Opensource.com have new levels of access, support, and exclusive opportunities.

2019 Opensource.com summer reading list

13 books to inform and entertain you during the long, lazy days of summer.

Haters gonna hate: 7 ways to deal with criticism

Learn how to handle the haters in a way that fits your personal needs, the community norms, and the specifics of the situation.

Authored Comments

bcotton

14 Jan 2021

How I prioritize tasks on my to-do list

This is a great tip. Conveniently, Todoist has four levels of priority flags. I went through and sorted a bunch of my todo list items using this method and it was pretty interesting to see how I arranged them. A lot of things are less pressing than I would have thought, which is a huge relief right about now.

bcotton

26 Oct 2020

10 Ansible modules for Linux system automation

What's your recommendation for handling the correct package names across multiple OSes?