SoylentNews

Building an Open Source Community

posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:00AM   
from the bizarre-cathedral dept.

nobbis writes:

"Mihai Guiman recounts how he built an open source community, FINkers United, around an open source financial application, FinTP. He believes that an open source project cannot succeed without a powerful community to support its development, and explains how FINkers United changed as the project moved from closed to open source. The management structure evolved and he expects new hierarchies to emerge based on merit and contribution. He notes the benefits of joining such a community as sharing interests and having the ability to act on ideas according to your beliefs. He poses a pertinent questions at the end: 'Why would you join an open source community?'"

[ED Note: As most of the Open Source news we hear these days relates to decade-spanning well established projects, it's good to be reminded that this process still goes on, and to reflect on what it means to be building a community-centric news discussion site.]

• The community matters. The community matters. (Score: 1, Flamebait) by rufty on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:53PM

  by rufty (381) on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:53PM (#2387)

  The community is what matters - if there's a catastrophic loss of source the community will re-create it ( and maybe implement a better backup strategy). Without a community the code will only still compile on VMS. This is why it's Linux and not Gnu/Linux. There's a Linux community and that's what matters. The Gnu is not relevant and does not deserve to shove to the front. Or even be there.

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		0
  Flamebait=1, Interesting=1, Total=2
  Extra 'Flamebait' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		1

• Linux Security, Red Hat and Systemd Conspiracy (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:09PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:09PM (#2614)

  I'm posting the submission that failed to make it to the front page of Soylent. Former cypherpunk shares his conspiratorial view on Linux security [wordpress.com]:

  Since then, more has happened to reveal the true story here, the depth of which surprised even me. The GTK development story and the systemd debate on Debian revealed much corporate pressure being brought to bear in Linux. [...] Some really startling facts about Red Hat came to light. For me the biggest was the fact that the US military is Red Hat's largest customer:

  "When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source," General Justice continued. "It may come as a surprise to many of you, but the U.S. Army is 'the' single largest install base for Red Hat Linux. I'm their largest customer." (2008 [linux.com])

  This is pretty much what I had figured. I'm not exactly new to this, and I figured that in some way the military-industrial/corporate/intelligence complex was in control of Red Hat and Linux. [...] But I didn't expect it to be stated so plainly. Any fool should realize that "biggest customer" doesn't mean tallest or widest, it means the most money. IOW, most of Red Hat's money comes from the military - they have first say in its development. And the connection between the military and spying agencies, etc. should be obvious.

  Next, a reader posted this FOSDEM: NSA Operation ORCHESTRA Annual Status Report [fosdem.org]. Well worth watching in its entirety (including the Q&A at the end), to me this turned out to be a road-map detailing how Red Hat is operating on Linux!

  Sorry for being offtopic.

  Parent

• Re:The community matters. (Score: 1) by mechanicjay on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:36PM

  by mechanicjay (7) <reversethis-{gro ... a} {yajcinahcem}> on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:36PM (#2765) Homepage Journal

  ...if only more stuff still did compile on VMS :(

  --
  My VMS box beat up your Windows box.

  Parent