money http://www.vancouvertechguy.com/taxonomy/term/5/atom/feed 2007-04-10T02:09:35-07:00 The Value of Giving http://www.vancouvertechguy.com/value_giving 2007-04-09T00:52:16-07:00 2007-04-10T02:09:35-07:00 admin One of the tasks I've been given recently is in helping other technology companies give back to the open source communities we all take so much joy in. On the flip side of the token, I have a number of customers who express incredulity at the thought of basing their beloved web project on open source software.

]]> One of the tasks I've been given recently is in helping other technology companies give back to the open source communities we all take so much joy in. On the flip side of the token, I have a number of customers who express incredulity at the thought of basing their beloved web project on open source software.

The value for me is an obvious one; I get paid to install, configure, and otherwise support open source software. For a corporation installing OSS, the benefit to giving back custom contributions can be less obvious. First, there's the perceived headache of maintaining whatever contributions a company releases. Then, there's the (sometimes) nightmarish task of separating out proprietary business logic from reusable ready made code. Add in the paranoia of giving competitors software for free, and Open Source can seem pretty daunting for a lot of companies.

The good news (as attested to by the proliferation and success of opensource software) is that the benefits far outweigh these perceived negatives. While altruism is a necessarily diluted concept in the era of shareholder value, giving can also mean receiving (I'm skipping over most of the altruistic benefits to contribution for the sake of brevity). By contributing to an opensource community, a company extends marketing potential to a whole group of potential clients, without having to source them out. If a project is adopted by the community, bug fixes and maintenance are delivered back to the company at no cost (and we all know that maintenance is the largest cost of any project!)

There's no reason to be afraid to contribute to your favorite opensource project. Unfinished code? Add it as a snippet, or write up know-how and guides. Allow your employees to act as evangelists internally and externally with blogs and posts. Pony up some cash if all this is outside the scope of what your organization is structurally capable of delivering. Every project usually has an abundance of programming talent, but a lack of documentation support and quality assurance. Find a bug? Don't sit on your hands, submit it. This contribution is just as valid as a whole component (more so, if some other vigilant user finds a solution, to the user experiencing the same troubles as you).

I'm always willing to look over a company's open source contribution plan for free, so please drop me a line.

 

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