Over on Simon’s personal blog he writes about the rediscovery of patronage as a model for people creating art, analysis and other works of creativity. If you have appreciated the posts on this site we invite you to become a patron too. Continue reading
Author Archives: meshedltd
Model Community
Simon started his term as a director of The Document Foundation yesterday (it’s the charity that develops LibreOffice) and has written on his personal blog explaining why TDF is a model for new open source community charities.
Stand Up For ODF In The UK
Showing that no issue is actually sorted until the end of the process is reached, Microsoft is trying to get its partner network to speak up for OOXML as a document format for government interaction. In a posting to ComputerWorldUK, Simon explains that this would defeat the objective explained by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, who said
“The software we use in government is still supplied by just a few large companies. A tiny oligopoly dominates the marketplace. I want to see a greater range of software used, so civil servants have access to the information they need and can get their work done without having to buy a particular brand of software.”
So ODF Advocates once again need to speak up for openness and diversity – there are links in the article.
Helping MariaDB Move Forward
MariaDB is an open source database that’s used increasingly in place of the MySQL project. It’s developed by many of the original developers of the MySQL project, working in an open source community. It has recently been chosen by the Fedora and OpenSUSE Linux distributions as their default SQL database, and it is being used for significant applications such as Wikipedia.
That community is progressing towards open governance anchored in a not-for-profit Foundation. Today that Foundation announced its next steps towards community-centric governance, with diversification of its Board of Directors and with the appointment of Simon Phipps from Meshed Insights as its interim CEO. We are delighted to be able to help the MariaDB community on its journey.
OSI Open Source Community Summit
The License Clinic for US Federal Agencies is not the only new departure for the Open Source Initiative this May. OSI is also reaching out to a wide spectrum of open source communities with its Open Source Community Summit in Washington DC on May 10 2013, where we’ll be able to gain a much fuller idea of the needs of those communities. Sponsored by Google, Red Hat and Eclipse, and chaired by OSI President Simon Phipps, this is OSI’s first Community Summit.
Attendees will explore answers to big questions faced by open source projects, both via keynotes from notable speakers and in unconference sessions. It will also be a chance to define in more depth the specific goals associated with OSI’s mission to defend, protect, educate about and promote open source. The “unconference sessions” format will create plenty of room for dialogue, so you’ll be able to bring your big ideas, interesting problems and wanted projects to the table.
Register now to be sure of a place at the first OSI Open Source Community Summit.
London Open Source Conference
It’s not too late to sign up for Open Source, Open Standards 2013 in London this Thursday. Chaired by our own Simon Phipps, the conference starts with a keynote from the UK government’s open source policy lead Tariq Rashid and includes speakers from the Met Office, the Government Digital Service and the London Borough of Camden.
Thinking Of Starting A Foundation?
Open source projects are increasingly opting to form an independent entity – a “Foundation” – to form the core of their community, rather than relying on goodwill or corporate oversight. Foundations often hold shared assets such as money, trademarks and copyrights, provide infrastructure, and sometimes employ staff.
The idea is seductive, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. A Foundation can’t solve your community problems; it can only make firm the solutions you devise, by providing a canvas on which to paint the trust and governance you have all agreed and to guarantee it for future generations of your community. You need to solve the problems first.
OSCON Speaker
Simon has had a talk accepted once again at the iconic Open Source Convention, OSCON. He’s spoken there many times before, including twice as a keynote speaker and this year is sharing experiences of corporations engaging with open source communities – from both sides of the fence. His talk “Can Evil Corporations Embrace Open Source?“, is scheduled for the Thursday morning of OSCON.
Meshed Insights Ltd 