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are you a ...?

• newcomer
• academic end-user
• software developer
• IT manager or technical staff
• strategic IT decision-maker

publications

• strategy and policy
• open standards
• open source software development
• intellectual property rights (IPR), licensing and patents
• building communities
• examples of open source software
• case studies

Successful open source software projects tend to develop committed communities of developers and users. These communities can include everyone from hobbyists to professional software writers to end users. They may form naturally or they may be significantly assisted by a large corporation. These resources explore the idea of community, how to participate in an open source software project, and how to best develop a community around your own project.

• Sustainability lessons for research infrastructure
• Community lessons for research infrastructure
• Open source and research infrastructure
• Governance models
• Meritocratic governance model
• Benevolent dictator governance model
• Open Accessibility - an overview of projects and communities
• Engaging developers workshop, Oxford, 9 October 2009
• Microsoft: an end to open hostilities?
• The fundamentals of free and open source software
• EduApps - a case study in sustainability
• Building Communties Around Free & Open Source Software
• Avoiding abandon-ware: getting to grips with the open development method
• Meritocrats, cluebats and the open development method: an interview with Justin Erenkrantz
• From a trickle to a flood: building wide open communities in open source - Community and Open Source Development Workshop, Oxford, 20 October 2008
• People and processes: the inside story of Customer Relationship Management
• The JISC Virtual Research Environment Phase Two Programme: Attitudes to and Awareness of Open Development
• Community source vs open source
• The community source development model
• Sustainable open source
• How to build an open source community
• WebPA: the road to sustainability
• Open Source Leadership: Debian
• A guide to participating in an open source software community
• Producing Open Source Software - book review

• Building Open Source Communities: a one-day OSS Watch conference held on 4 July 2005 in Edinburgh presentations (pdf):
• What is an open source software community? Sebastian Rahtz, Manager, OSS Watch
• Licences, Features, and Community: The Path to Sustainability Jim Farmer, Community Liaison, Sakai Educational Partners Program
• Co-located agile development Helen Sharp, The Open University
• Serving Maths: Experiences from a JISC Distributed e-Learning Project Gustav Delius, University of York
• Life and times in the Apache community Andrew Savory, Director, Luminas
• MoodleMoot: Meeting Real People from a Virtual Community Sean Keogh, UK Moodle Partner

Further external resources:

• What Does Openness Mean To The Museum Community? (paper co-written by Ross Gardler) [http://www.archimuse.com/mw2008/papers/kelly/kelly.html]
• Open Source Community Building [http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/sturmer.pdf]
• How To Ask Questions The Smart Way [http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html]
• Case study of the Clinical Research Information Exchange (CRIX) International consortium (PDF format) [http://www.alfresco.com/customers/pdfs/CRIX.pdf]