Success Factors

The January issue of the OSBR is now available in PDF and HTML formats. The editorial theme this month is "success factors" and the authors include:

George Neville-Neil, a member of the FreeBSD Project's core team, examines how one particular open source project has developed processes which provide its users, customers, and partners with a product that is stable, reliable, and long lived.

Janet Swisher, a professional technical writer, describes the importance of user assistance to the success of open source projects and offers some suggestions on fostering community contributions to open source user assistance.

Brent McConnell, a Community Consultant at Collabnet, presents some of the actions open source community leaders can take to concurrently deliver results and a system that encourages productivity and longevity.

Mekki MacAulay, Principal of OSStrategy, discusses how passive participants in open source ecosystems play an important role in value creation in the ecosystem.

Belinda Lopez, Training Project Manager for Canonical, explores curriculum creation models and some of the conditions that are necessary for successful collaboration between creators of existing open source documentation and commercial training providers.

Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation, answers the question "How can a community be considered "open source" if its primary objective is to promote commercialization?".

Starting on January 8, we will offer a weekly column written by open source experts, in addition to the monthly issue of the OSBR. Our first columnist will be Stephen Huddart, Vice President of the J. W. McConnell Family Foundation. You can view the column on the OSBR website and blog.

The editorial theme for the upcoming February issue of the OSBR is Startups. Submissions are due by January 20--contact the Editor if you are interested in a submission.

We hope you enjoy this issue of the OSBR and share articles of interest with your colleagues.