{"id":55,"date":"2007-02-13T15:45:47","date_gmt":"2007-02-13T13:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appinf.com\/poco\/blog\/?p=55"},"modified":"2007-02-13T15:45:47","modified_gmt":"2007-02-13T13:45:47","slug":"how-to-tell-the-open-source-winners-from-the-losers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/?p=55","title":{"rendered":"How To Tell The Open Source Winners From The Losers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the last <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationweek.com\">Information Week<\/a> issue, there is an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationweek.com\/software\/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197002953&#038;pgno=1\">article<\/a> by Charles Babcock on the topic of open source and its feasibility for companies.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s Babcock&#8217;s classification of a succesful OS project:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>A thriving community<\/strong><\/li>\n<p>A handful of lead developers, a large body of contributors, and a substantial&#8211;or at least motivated&#8211;user group offering ideas.<\/p>\n<li><strong>Disruptive goals<\/strong><\/li>\n<p>Does something notably better than commercial code. Free isn&#8217;t enough.<\/p>\n<li><strong>A benevolent dictator<\/strong><\/li>\n<p>Leader who can inspire and guide developers, asking the right questions and letting only the right code in.<\/p>\n<li><strong>Transparency<\/strong><\/li>\n<p>Decisions are made openly, with threads of discussion, active mailing list, and negative and positive comments aired.<\/p>\n<li><strong>Civility<\/strong><\/li>\n<p>Strong forums police against personal attacks or niggling issues, focus on big goals.<\/p>\n<li><strong>Documentation<\/strong><\/li>\n<p>What good&#8217;s a project that can&#8217;t be implemented by those outside its development?<\/p>\n<li><strong>Employed developers<\/strong><\/li>\n<p>The key developers need to work on it full time.<\/p>\n<li><strong>A clear license<\/strong><\/li>\n<p>Some are very business friendly, others clear as mud.<\/p>\n<li><strong>Commercial support<\/strong><\/li>\n<p>Companies need more than e-mail support from volunteers. Is there a solid company employing people you can call?<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the last Information Week issue, there is an article by Charles Babcock on the topic of open source and its feasibility for companies. Here&#8217;s Babcock&#8217;s classification of a succesful OS project: A thriving community A handful of lead developers, a large body of contributors, and a substantial&#8211;or at least motivated&#8211;user group offering ideas. Disruptive [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocoproject.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}