Stephen Walli

The audience will learn about the collaboration the OpenInfra Foundation has fostered with universities to get students involved in Open Source before graduation. After reaching over 100 students, we have learned a lot and are eager to share improvements and plans for the future.

Engineers have collaborated on software since they've written software all the way back through the 1950s. In the past few years we have begun to see people argue for a different definition of open source software and raise concerns for the sustainability of the ecosystem. This talk looks at the underpinnings of those concerns, and how the future of free software is an anchor going forward.

From Red Hat to MySQL, many believe there is an open source business model around the open source project. This is generally a bad idea, and leads to confusion between projects and products, customers and the community. This presentation will take folks on a general tour of how to think about starting a software company, producing and consuming open source software projects, and the pitfalls to avoid. 

The open source definition is almost 20 years old. Linux has celebrated its 25th anniversary. Red Hat is 22 years old and has been public for 16 of them. Folks seem to think the world of open source has changed and needs to evolve to sustain itself and play better in the corporate world. At each point through its history there have been problems leveled at open source, from the tragedy of the commons and IP practices, and now corporate participation and sustainability. None of these problems really exist, if you look at the underlying reality of software. 

There are a set of patterns that successful open source software projects follow. These activities can be organized around software construction, community development, and IP management activities. This talk explores their connections to build on ramps for community success.