Your company has just started an open source project, but where is the community? This talk provides practical tips and suggestions along with what not to do when building a community around your company’s open source project. Building a community around your company’s open source project is no easy task, and there is no magic bullet or one size fits all solution. However, there are some things that you can do (or not do) to increase the chances of successfully building a community for your project. A few of the dos and don’ts covered in this talk include: Planning and product management: Do use a transparent process in the open with tools that allow anyone to participate. Don’t use your internal tools and private meetings to make all of the decisions. Encourage participation: Do be proactive about helping community members contribute in meaningful ways. Don’t inadvertently set the expectation that employees will be the ones always answering questions and making decisions. Be honest: Do be honest with yourselves about where and how you prefer to have community members contribute. Don’t encourage people to contribute in areas where you are less likely to accept outside contributions. Managing contributions: Do have enough people trained in how to provide constructive feedback to manage the flow of incoming community contributions. Don’t assume that your existing developers have the time and skills to magically perform this difficult function. The audience will walk away with practical advice about building communities for corporate open source projects.

1. Building Community for your
Company’s OSS Projects
Dawn M. Foster
Open Source Strategy at Pivotal, now part of VMware
FOSDEM Community Devroom, February 2020
dafoster@pivotal.io @geekygirldawn fastwonderblog.com

2. • Geek, traveler, reader
• 20+ year tech career focused on
community & open source
(Intel, Puppet Labs, Scale Factory,
etc.)
• PhD from the University of Greenwich
focus on Linux kernel collaboration
• Kubernetes contributor
• OpenUK Board, CHAOSS Governing
Board and Maintainer, Bitergia
Advisory Board
Photos by Josh Bancroft, Don Park
whoami

3. @geekygirldawn
The Problem is Hard
Communities are
made of squishy
humans 🤔

4. @geekygirldawn
Types of OSS Projects
Grassroots
Ecosystem
Company
Photo by David Jakes - CC BY 2.0

5. @geekygirldawn
Why Open Source?
Open source for
innovation and adoption
Photo by C. Watts CC BY 2.0

6. @geekygirldawn
Transparency
Use public
channels
Photo by magpietales CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

7. @geekygirldawn
Governance
Transparent
decision-making and
a path to leadership
Photo by Allen and Allen - CC BY 2.0

8. @geekygirldawn
Be Honest
With yourselves
and
with the community
Photo by Amanda Slater - CC BY-SA 2.0

9. @geekygirldawn
Remove Barriers
To CLA,
or not to CLA,
that is the question
Photo by Kate Ter Haar - CC BY 2.0

10. @geekygirldawn
Licenses
Can have a
big impact on
participation
Photo by Allen and Allan - CC BY 2.0

11. @geekygirldawn
Encourage Participation
Be proactive,
but leave space for
others to contribute

12. @geekygirldawn
Recruit Companies
Existing
relationships
and partners
Photo by Jan Fidler - CC BY 2.0

13. @geekygirldawn
Planning and Product Management
Feature planning
in the open can
be difficult
Photo by Natalio - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

14. @geekygirldawn
Managing Contributions
Feedback requires
time and skills
Image by Tomomi - CC BY 2.0

15. @geekygirldawn
Resources
• Linux Foundation’s TODO Group
https://todogroup.org/guides/
• GitHub
https://opensource.guide
• Red Hat’s opensource.com
https://opensource.com/resources
Photo by Abhi Sharma - CC BY 2.0

16. Thank You and Questions
Dawn M. Foster
dafoster@pivotal.io @geekygirldawn fastwonderblog.com