Category: 1.4 Open Source Foundations
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A Simple Model of the Organizational Support of Open Source Projects
I’m very much interested in the governance of open source projects, in particular if these are user-led projects. With this post, I’m proposing a basic terminology to talk about the formal organizational structure underlying the governance of such open source projects. As the following two lists show, there are only three basic situations. First, there…
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My top three trends for open source in 2019 (3/3)
The most important long-term trend, and my number #3 for the foreseeable future, is the sponsorship and management of open source software development by users, not vendors. The trend towards ubiquitous digitization is leading users of software to take their software fate into their own hands, establishing informal communities or incorporating as non-profit user consortia…
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Looking for examples of open source user consortia
We are researching the governance of open source software foundations. We are specifically interested in what we call open source user consortia, that is, open source foundations where the users of the software are in the driver’s seat. A primary example would be Kuali, which hosts the development of software for academic institutions. A more…
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Classifying open source user consortia
An open source software user consortium is a non-profit organization (foundation, consortium, working group) created for the purpose of funding and managing the development of non-differentiating open source software made available to foundation members and the general public. Its purpose is to establish a software ecosystem in which vendors and suppliers can provide products and…
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OpenKONSEQUENZ: Offene Software für Netzbetreiber (in German)
Consulting company PTA reports about its development of open source software for the German energy software user consortium openKONSEQUENZ, which sponsors and manages the development of open source software for the energy sector. The Netzpraxis article start out with: Auf der openKONSEQUENZ-Plattform steht seit kurzem Unternehmen der Energie- und Wasserwirtschaft das Modul »Betriebstagebuch« zur Verfügung.…
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How to capture open source user consortia 4/4
tl;dr: Existing foundations need a new kind of incubator to capture budding user consortia. An open source user consortium is a consortium of companies who sponsor, steer, and possibly also develop open source software for their own use rather than as part of software products they sell. As explained previously, this phenomenon may not be…