One of the most challenging things for organizations is understanding how influence is earned within open source projects. Just because your organization is a big deal, doesn’t mean that you should expect to be treated like one without earning the respect of the open source community. Influence comes from participation, and some of the people contributing to an open source project will eventually earn positions of greater influence and leadership over time after they prove that they are reliable and responsible.

You should also expect some conflict and be ready to handle it professionally. The review process can get quite heated as people disagree with decisions, approaches or styles of contributions. It’s important to remain calm and professional while making sure that the feedback stays focused on the contribution rather than becoming personal. Keep in mind that your participation in an open source project is public and could remain on the internet forever, and one heated discussion that got out of hand could come back to haunt you as an organization or an individual at a later date. Because all of this participation is very public, offering some training about handling difficult people and resolving conflict for your employees might be a good idea.

Having a deliberate and thoughtful open source contribution strategy not only helps guide your employees when participating in open source projects, but it can also help justify this participation to senior management within your organization. It’s important to start by looking at your organization’s overall business goals to figure out how your open source efforts fit into your broader strategies. (See our guide on Creating an Open Source Business Strategy.) By clearly tying your open source contribution strategy to the organization’s strategic efforts, you can show senior management why the work is important and help your employees understand the impact of their contributions.

“Support from leadership and acknowledgement that open source is a business critical part of your strategy is so important. You should really understand the company’s objectives and how to enable them in your open source strategy.”

Nithya Ruff – Senior Director, Open Source Practice at Comcast

Once you’ve developed some goals and strategies that are aligned with the business goals, you’ll need to develop an implementation plan. These questions will help you think about some of the things that might need to be addressed in your plan:

• Why are these contributions important? It’s easy to jump in and start talking about all of the great things you plan to do, so don’t forget to include compelling arguments for why this work is important and strategic to the organization.
• Which open source projects do we use within the organization? Take some time to assess which open source projects are already in use across the entire organization to determine which ones are strategic to your business. A few places you might want to focus your assessment: critical business infrastructure (operations), development and deployment tools that impact your ability to release products, and software that is important for customer-facing products or services.
• Which projects should we target for contribution? Most organizations use many open source projects, so it’s important to make sure that your plan focuses on just the most important ones. Just because a project isn’t on the target list doesn’t mean that people can’t contribute to that project; it just means that it isn’t a critical focus for your organization. If an open source project is critical to your business and has the potential to cause significant downtime or disruption to your ability to serve your customers, it’s probably a good candidate for contributions.
• What are the contributions we are already making? In some cases, you might already have people making changes to open source projects. They may be creating patches that are used internally, or they could already be contributing those patches back to the upstream project to avoid maintaining them. Spend some time talking to your internal teams to find potential contributions that you can build on while assessing whether or not you already have people on staff who might have the skills and interest to contribute.
• Do we already have the relevant expertise, or do we need to hire for it? As discussed previously in this guide, it’s important to find people who have both the skills to create the contribution along with the people skills to work with the community to have the contribution accepted. If you already have people contributing to some of these projects, you might be able to use existing staff. If not, you should consider hiring someone who is already making successful contributions to the project. As with any plan, you need to make sure that you have the resources and hiring budget required for it to be a success.
• What funding do we need for project sponsorships/corporate memberships? Look at the governance models for the projects you’ve selected to determine whether there is an option for corporate membership or sponsorship for the project or the foundation responsible for it. This provides funding to help the project be successful, and in some cases, it can help your organization get more involved in an advisory role or provide some influence into the project. In addition to funding projects directly, consider sponsoring related conferences. These can be great for getting the word out about your work and for meeting people who you might want to recruit.
• How should we promote our open source efforts? Depending on your organization, marketing or promoting your open source contributions can be tricky. Therefore, it’s important to include this in your implementation plan to make sure that everyone knows how you discuss your contributions in public. Sponsorships and giving talks at the project’s conference or other events can be a good way to promote the work that you are doing and recruit contributors. In particular, don’t overlook your participation in local user groups where you have employees. Sponsoring those local groups and sending contributors to give talks can be a great way to recruit local people who are passionate about particular open source projects.
• What contribution guidelines or processes do we need? These guidelines and processes should be less about rules and regulations and more about helping people be successful in making contributions to open source projects. It can help if people have guidelines and checklists to make sure that they have everything they need to make a successful contribution without running into licensing or confidentiality issues. Especially for new contributors, it can also help to have an internal review process available as a safe place to get feedback before making a contribution.
• What kinds of training must we provide? Training on best practices for making contributions, along with some general training about open source licenses, governance, and norms associated with participation in open source communities, can be very useful. Training on conflict resolution, dealing with difficult people, and other people skills can also help avoid issues later. To scale your efforts over time, include in your training plan some programming that provides experienced open source contributors as mentors for new contributors.
• How will we determine whether the plan is successful? Every plan should include success criteria and a plan for measuring whether you achieved your goals. This should come directly out of your strategies to make sure that you are tracking those activities that are the most important for your organization, rather than the ones that are the easiest to measure. The open source GrimoireLab project is a good place to start if you need measurement and metrics tools. (See our guide on How to Measure Open Source Program Success.)
• Do we need an open source office to manage all of these efforts? Having an open source program office or dedicated staff who are responsible for implementing the plan can help you navigate this terrain. At a minimum, you’ll want to have someone responsible putting processes and training in place, providing licensing guidance, answering questions from senior management or contributors, and communicating updates throughout the organization. (See our guide on Creating an Open Source Program Office.)