“Large open source projects with many developers can sometimes feel like chaotic construction zones.” This week’s show is all about open-source communities. Jesse White, CTO and President of R&D at OpenNMS, joins Etienne de Bruin to define and describe open source communities, what they do, and how they work.

Some ideas you’ll hear them explore are:

OpenNMS is an open-source network monitoring program intended to monitor large enterprises at scale.

How do you nurture a community that has strong feelings about where the product needs to go?

“I see my role as being as transparent as possible in painting a picture of where we're going as an organization and what impacts that has on the open source project that we have,” Jesse shares.

Sometimes when things go wrong inside an open source community, developers fork projects in different directions or start another community outright. 

If you’re thinking about contributing to an open-source community, you should start by asking around. You should also advocate for your own work - don’t seclude yourself in a silo and only come out when it’s ready. Let people know what you’re working on, and keep them posted. Even if there’s no response, people will see it and be aware.

The key to open source is the openness of code, disposition, and how you approach it. 


Resources
Jesse White on the Web | LinkedIn