On Wed, Oct 12, 2005 at 10:23:39AM -0700, Ted Gould wrote:
Bryce Harrington wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is that one of the argues AGAINST a company open sourcing their codebase is a worry that "then they'll just take our code, and we'll fail." So I think it would be most prudent to talk not about snagging code, but _sharing_ it.
Oh Bryce, you're being so polite :) Seriously though, they need to figure out how they want to deal with the community. Until they define
This seems very simple to us, but I've had first hand experience at OSDL with the myriad of ways that companies run into trouble figuring out how to deal with the community. I think we all know how different open source is from traditional proprietary company culture. In open source, it's natural and normal to just say whatever's on your mind off the cuff, to the whole world, but in business culture, one tends to be more private and closed, and keep info close to the vest. Companies *can* change this culture, but it's hard and takes time. For an individual in an open source project, saying or doing something dumb and getting flamed is annoying and frustrating; in a company, getting flamed is much scarier - what will your customers think? what will your boss (or employees) think? will you lose your job? So developing a thick skin and a confidence in talking directly to an open source community is tough.
However, I think we as a group can help them get over this hurdle. We're a nice and friendly community, so for the most part I think we just need to be ourselves and treat them just like any other community member. If we can get the open communication kickstarted, I think that will be key; with good communication established, problems are much easier to solve, and a lot of potential problems can be avoided entirely. It's in our best interest to help them start communicating with us (if not on this list, then perhaps on some other forum or technology they're more comfortable with), because once that's established, a lot of our concerns can just be worked out normally.
that publicly, I think most discussion here is speculation. I'd also imagine that they have engineers reading this list, and the fact that they haven't commented yet says that they're not entirely sure yet.
That is possible; I've invited Charles to encourage one of his engineers, testers, or sysadmins to join the list; if they're on, I hope they'll jump in and say hi.
Bryce