18
How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers Stephen R. Walli Technical Director, Outercurve Foundation @stephenrwalli [email protected] Monday, 23 July, 12

How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Embed Size (px)

DESCRIPTION

My talk from OSCON 2012 in Portland, OR http://www.oscon.com/oscon2012/public/schedule/detail/23398 Before we had Internet-sized bandwidth on which to collaborate around software, traditional software business was a simple pipeline. R&D delivered product into the pipe. Marketing delivered messages. Sales and marketing managed and qualified leads through the pipeline and if the product solved a customer problem properly, a market was made and you could measure the profits. With the rise of the Internet collaborative development communities formed around FOSS licenses. Many have tried to create businesses around such communities, or conversely create their own communities as an adjunct to their business. But in the ensuing confusion of customers and community no one is ever happy. This talk offers insight into how to think about both groups differently to everyone’s benefit.

Citation preview

Page 1: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community

with Your CustomersStephen R. Walli

Technical Director, Outercurve Foundation@stephenrwalli

[email protected]

Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 2: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

Traditional Software Business

2

Customer Pipeline

R&D

Product

Marketing

Messages

$$$

Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 3: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

Misconceptions about Community

3

Customer Pipeline

R&D

Product

MarketingMessages

$$$

Code,etc.

Com

mun

ity

Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 4: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

A Better Model for Community & Pipeline

4

Customer Pipeline

R&D

Product

Marketing

Messages

$$$

Code,etc.

Com

mun

ity

Conversations

Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 5: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

A Better Model for Community & Pipeline

5

R&D

Product

Marketing

Messages

$$$

Code,etc.

Conversations

IdentifyCustomer Awareness Download

& TryDeploy?Train?

??? Buy

Identifycommunity

What Mission?

Platform &Tools

Arch. of Participation

Code of Conduct

IPMachine

GovernanceStructure

Community members build awareness and evangelize, provide expertise and trial support, are a demonstration of solution viability, and provide great inertia around your solution

Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 6: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

What do you want to happen in Community

• Bug Reports? (Test/QA)• Code? (New Innovation, Bug Fixes)• Translations?• Forums? (Support)• Education? (Tutorials, How-to)• “Plug-in” modules? (“Partners”)

6Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 7: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

A Model for a Community Pipeline

7

R&D

Product

Marketing

Messages

$$$

Code,etc.

Conversations

Download

Install/Configure

Use/Deploy

Reporta Bug

DownloadSource Code

Build to Known State

Test to Known State

Submit aPatch

Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 8: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

Understanding Community & Customers

8

Community• Users with time but no money• Will contribute time to solve their problems • Look to community and project for solutions• Need guidance and tool support• Play by the community code of conduct• Become technology evangelists• Become knowledgeable experts

Customers• They have money but little time• They want to buy something • Look to the product to solve their problems• Community/project is a test for product • May participate in community (by the rules)

Before we had online communities around open source projects, tech communities overlapped customers much more because one needed to be a customer before one had the interest and joined the community

Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 9: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

Understanding Community and Open Source

9

Community• Users with time but no money• Will contribute time to solve their problems • Look to community and project for solutions• Need guidance and tool support• Play by the community code of conduct• Become technology evangelists • Become knowledgeable experts

Customers• They have money but little time• They want to buy something • Look to the product to solve their problems• Community/project is a test for product • May participate in community (by the rules)

Published S

oftware

Differentiated P

roduct

TraditionalClosed Company

Pure Open Source Community

Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 10: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

Understanding Community and Open Source

10

Community• Users with time but no money• Will contribute time to solve their problems • Look to community and project for solutions• Need guidance and tool support• Play by the community code of conduct• Become technology evangelists• Become knowledgeable experts

Customers• They have money but little time• They want to buy something • Look to the product to solve their problems• Community/project is a test for product • May participate in community (by the rules)

Published S

ourceP

roductThere is no requirement to build a community if you publish source code

Publishing source is a sign of strength and confidence in your customer commitment as a company

You can have a community without open source (e.g. MSDN) and you can have open source without community

Published S

oftware

Differentiated P

roduct

Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 11: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

Understanding Community & Partner Programs

11

Community• Users with time but no money• Will contribute time to solve their problems • Look to community and project for solutions• Need guidance and tool support• Play by the community code of conduct• Become technology evangelists• Become knowledgeable experts

Customers• They have money but little time• They want to buy something • Look to the product to solve their problems• Community/project is a test for product • May participate in community (by the rules)

Partners• Want to grow their business • Want to complement the product • Want to cross-sell• May join the community• MUST play by community rules

Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 12: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

Understanding Community & Foundations

12

Community• Users with time but no money• Will contribute time to solve their problems • Look to community and project for solutions• Need guidance and tool support• Play by the community code of conduct• Become technology evangelists• Become knowledgeable experts

Members• Pay to manage the roadmap• Share the cost of technology promotion • Share the cost of clear IP management• Play by the rules of membership

Members

Foundations• Create neutral non-profit collaboration space• Provide IP management and risk mitigation• Provide project management expertise• Promote the technology (marketing)• Provide business operations • Provide technical services &infrastructure

Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 13: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

A Model for Thinking about Foundations

• Neutral non-profit IP management machines• Encourage corporations to contribute and adopt

–Better provenance management–Neutral ownership–Legal governance and bylaws

• Henrik Ingo’s Observations –Foundations by the Numbers–The 9 largest open source communities versus the

10th• OpenStack and CloudStack

13Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 14: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

James Dixon’s Beekeeper Model - I

14Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 15: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

James Dixon’s Beekeeper Model - II

15Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 16: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

Matt Aslett Evolves the Beekeeper Model

16Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 17: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

The Reading List

Customers and Community http://stephesblog.blogs.com/my_weblog/2010/05/open-source-communities-and-customers-in-pictures.html

Products versus Projectshttp://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/foss-project-isn%E2%80%99t-necessarily-software-produ

James Dixon’s Beekeeper Modelhttp://jamesdixon.wordpress.com/the-bees-and-the-trees/

Henrik Ingo’s Foundation Numbershttp://openlife.cc/blogs/2010/november/how-grow-your-open-source-project-10x-and-revenues-5xhttp://openlife.cc/blogs/2012/july/cloudstack-has-proof-foundations-way-create-foss-community

Blog: Once More Unto the Breachhttp://stephesblog.blogs.com/

Twitter: @stephenrwalliEmail: [email protected]

17Monday, 23 July, 12

Page 18: How Not to Confuse Your Open Source Community with Your Customers

Copyright, Stephen R. Walli, some rights reservedDistributed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed

FIN

18Monday, 23 July, 12