Upcoming Themes and Guest Editors

The genesis for the OSBR came out of a question a student asked their Carleton University professor: "how do you make money from open source?". A short and simple question with a long and complex answer. The OSBR records the insights of researchers, company executives, project managers, and foundation members as they explore this answer within the container of an editorial theme.

Past themes (available here) include: support, licensing, business models, enterprise readiness, procurement, clean intellectual property, and interoperability. Starting with the August 2008 issue, we've introduced guest editors who bring their own network of author contacts, allowing us to increase our connections with those who can augment our understanding of the business of open source.

The lineup of upcoming themes and guest editors so far includes:

September 2008: Social Innovation, Tony Bailetti from Carleton University

October 2008: Building Community, Michael Weiss from Carleton University

November 2008: Health and Life Sciences, Leslie Hawthorn from Google's Open Source Programs Office

December 2008: Enabling Innovation, Steven Muegge from Carleton University

January 2009: Enterprise Participation, Don Smith from the Eclipse Foundation

February 2009: Commercialisation, Robert Withrow from Nortel

March 2009: Geospatial, Dave McIlhagga from the OSGEO Foundation

April 2009: Open APIs, Michael Weiss from Carleton University

If you would like to suggest an upcoming theme or act as a guest editor, contact the OSBR editor.

A Practioners Guide to Ecosystem Development

The key messages and presentation slides from last night's lecture are now available. The audio of the presentation will be published with the September issue of the OSBR and I'll post a link once it is available.

One of the things I like about the TIM Lecture Series is the level of audience participation, both in person and via web conferencing. Mike provided many interesting insights from the Eclipse Foundation's experience and the audience built upon that by adding their own insights.

If you're new to the concept of ecosystems outside of the realm of ecology, the Wikipedia entries for business ecosystems and for James F. Moore provide a good starting point. Professor Bailetti from Carleton University provides further insights in his article Ecosystem Approach to the Commercialization of Technology Products and Services.

Probably the most interesting take-away from the lecture was that the Eclipse Foundation is breaking ground with a model where the keystone of the ecosystem is a non-profit, most of the complementors within the ecosystem are commercial interests, and the ecosystem as a whole is based on an open source model. Very little of the literature available today about business ecosystems discusses--or understands--how open source models operate.

Mike Milinkovich Lecture This Evening

Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation, will be speaking tonight at Carleton University in Ottawa. From the lecture abstract:

The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit organization which has achieved a great deal of success in creating and nurturing a multi-billion dollar, worldwide ecosystem that spans hundreds of companies and thousands of products. Most of this has been accomplished in blissful ignorance of ecosystem theory. As such, we’ve made some mistakes, but we also have some observations on where the theory is lacking and upon occasion lagging rather than predicting what’s actually happening in the real world. Mike Milinkovich is one of the relatively few people today who has the responsibility to cultivate “… an ecosystem of complementary products, capabilities, and services…” in his job description.

In this lecture, we introduce the fundamental concepts of ecosystems, and how Eclipse matches the theory.

If you're interested in attending the lecture, sign up at the TIM Lecture Series wiki so we can bring enough refreshments. If you're not in the Ottawa area, you can still attend via voice conferencing or webcast; directions for joining are here.

Mike co-authored an article about the Eclipse ecosystem in the first issue of the OSBR--you'll find that article here.

Welcome to the Open Source Business Resource

Since the Open Source Business Resource began publishing in July of 2007, we've been concentrating on creating a resource of quality, non-technical documentation about open source written by authors who deal with open source on a daily basis. Fourteen months later, we have published over 100 practical and thought provoking articles and several dozen more are in the queue waiting to be published. You'll find articles that address topics such as licensing, enterprise readiness, security, interoperability, and support from authors with backgrounds ranging from research, academia, various industry sectors, non-profits, and open source projects or foundations. All content is freely available in HTML or PDF formats and provided under a Creative Commons license.

To some degree, we've become a victim of our own success. Looking at all of the available content, where does one begin? We've started this blog to help readers find content useful to them and to showcase the many gems and resources provided by our authors. We look forward to sharing with you the insights we've learned from our authors as well as receiving your feedback.