[FM Discuss] Are we ready to expand?

[adam hyde]

hey,

Interesting questions.

I think FM already takes on work like this. Its how I pay my rent since
I work on FM more or less fulltime, and since FM doesn't have a revenue
stream as such, I pay my rent by hosting Book Sprints. This is what we
are doing for the CiviCRM sprint. 

With CiviCRM I am being paid by them to host the sprint. They also
wanted to pay an editor so I recommended Andy and CiviCRM is now also
contracting Andy to fulfill his role. 

Most of the time these events are not paid. For me it doesn't matter, I
do them paid or unpaid (actually most book sprints cost me money).

So, I guess the kind of projects you suggest Andy are already in
existence and they are, as I see it, an essential part of the ecology of
FM. 

What I would like to see as we continue to grow, is a healthy mix of
voluntary and paid projects. We should try and hit an equilibrium
whereby volunteering is the norm and paid work is a nice bonus if and
when it comes. 

As for the question you directly pose - "what does FM need to have in
place so I can confidently encourage projects like OpenSIMS and Cloudera
to use it?"

I would say that the people are already there, but if there is money
involved its nice to be direct about it and ask FM people directly for
their involvement stating if there is money involved or not. I have been
putting these questions either through the list (eg. How to Bypass
Internet Censorship) or to people directly (eg. CiviCRM sprint).

The toolset is also there - but if a paying project requires extra
functionality then we have to make sure this is functionality we
actually want, and it would also be nice to pay Aco or Douglas for this
dev.

So, as I see it we are good to go with this kind of project. The biggest
issue I see is how we manage to keep the goodwill intact within FM while
managing the needs of a paid project. I believe this is largely done by
keeping everything upfront and transparent within FM and by treating
everyone with respect, but it also means managing the needs of the
person paying the bills - they need to know they are working with a
community and not a single celled organism - they have to understand
this and understand why this works and that this relationship is
different from most standard work-for-hire processes. 

>From my experience with this so far, I think these last points are more
art than science.

adam


On Mon, 2009-04-27 at 12:14 -0400, Andy Oram wrote:
> The central question during the FLOSS Manuals meetings at Wintercamp
> in March was how to put the organization on a firmer and broader
> foundation so we could accommodate new projects. I'm facing that issue
> increasingly. Here are two examples over the past two weeks:
> 
> 1. For years I've been talking to a security and open source expert
>    associated with OpenSIMS (http://opensims.sourceforge.net/) and
>    when he recently brought up their documentation, I mentioned what
>    FLOSS Manuals could do. He seemed interested and pulled in other
>    project leaders, although the thread petered out for now.
> 
> 2. On Friday I met the head of Cloudera (http://www.cloudera.com/) to
>    see how I could form a relationship with O'Reilly. He complained
>    about their documentation and said he'd be willing to pay someone
>    to help, but didn't want a tech writer out of the blue with no
>    commitment to the project. He challenged me to check their
>    documentation and make a proposal. (Cloudera is a proprietary
>    service but is closely based on open source software.)
> 
> As people on this FM list should know. I want to develop a new
> business around consulting for projects like this. On the current
> CiviCRM sprint, Adam is paying me to help--you all should be told. And
> I'm earning it, too; I've already invested 12 hours in organizing and
> evaluating input into the outline. I haven't even started editing yet,
> and the sprint hasn't started.
> 
> So I think there are opportunities for both me personally and for
> FLOSS Manuals here. Over the past few years I've encountered many open
> source projects that knew they needed help with documentation and had
> some funds they could invest in it.
> 
> Right now, FLOSS Manuals doesn't have a process that scales, but we
> clearly have at least have a dozen people who can lead book sprints
> and we have momentum. Furthermore, sprints don't have to be the only
> way to produce documentation.
> 
> I'm going to start taking advantage of opportunities like OpenSIMS and
> Cloudera. I don't know how it will relate to my job at O'Reilly, and
> how it will relate to FLOSS Manuals. O'Reilly does some
> community-building work but doesn't have any help in place for the
> particular projects I'm interested in. The FM platform is attractive
> and I value the expertise of my FM colleagues.
> 
> Following up on our Wintercamp discussions, what does FM need to have
> in place so I can confidently encourage projects like OpenSIMS and
> Cloudera to use it?
> 
> Andy
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-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
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Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
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