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Introducing //TODO for companies that are committed to open source

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Re: Introducing //TODO for companies that are committed to open source

#21
post #19

I'm surprised this came from Github considering there's nothing even remotely parsable anywhere. Maybe it's my (legit) dyslexia, but I can't understand what the hell this is. Secondly, Walmart labs?

I'm involved & left some thoughts in a neighbouring comment. Also: https://github.com/walmartlabs :)

Re: Introducing //TODO for companies that are committed to open source

#22
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

No, very much inclusive. We'll be getting back to all the companies interested in the very short term.

Ah. Thank you for pointing that out. I completely missed it. I will delete my comment.

Re: Introducing //TODO for companies that are committed to open source

#23
post #20

Hey all, I've been part of pulling this initiative together and thought I'd just put together some of our early thoughts. The primary purpose is to get the open source program managers from companies together. It turns out there are a bunch of challenges for companies who want to run open source projects effectively, and we discovered we had only rarely even shared our own experiences of doing so - let alone figured…

If I'm understanding the intent correctly, it sounds like the home page could use something like this: "Does your company release open source projects? Would you like to improve how you interact with the open source community to better manage and run your projects? Join your peers at //TODO and collaborate on practices, tools, and other ways to run a successful and effective open source program."

Yes. Maybe this is why we are not in marketing :)

Re: Introducing //TODO for companies that are committed to open source

#24
Thanks for the comments everyone, hopefully I can answer some of the questions about what TODO is about and where it's headed, don't miss jamesgpearce's comments too.

One of the first principles when forming the group was that we wanted to collaborate with, and learn from, each other before developing prescriptive guidelines. The ten member companies that launched with TODO are just a fraction of companies that have open source programs; there are companies in wide ranging industries like finance, automotive, and retail that have already expressed interest in participating too. So instead of launching today with our version of the answers, we wanted to invite dialogue and particiaption.

Many of the participating and interested companies have already written extensive documentation and internal tools to solve some of the unique challenges of their open source programs. We want to take that experience, find the common patterns, and open it up to the broader community.

We believe that the best practices, tooling, and development principles that will come from the group will improve the overall quality of the projects; that these projects can be adopted by other companies with certain expectations.

If these are the same problems you face in your company's open source program, we'd love to hear from you and have you participate because you can help define the problems we tackle.

Re: Introducing //TODO for companies that are committed to open source

#25
post #9
post #2

After reading this announcement, I have no clue what this is or why my company might want to join it.

Would love to see someone from Github answer this question. Very curious what //TODO is about, what it actually does, etc.

I added some comments about the impetus for launching TODO, and why we approached it by not being prescriptive out of the gate. The list of possible projects is long, and our first order of business is prioritizing them.

We'll be contacting the interested companies (over 200 now) about an in-person workshop and the other discussion platforms we're using.

Re: Introducing //TODO for companies that are committed to open source

#27
post #8

At first I thought this was going to be a tool that highlights "//TODO:" comments in code for contributors to hack on in open-source projects.

I've been quietly hacking away at a tool like that if you are interested. https://github.com/rcaught/todos_export

Re: Introducing //TODO for companies that are committed to open source

#28
James Pearce (Facebook Open Source Person commenting in here) gave a pretty interesting talk about Facebook's internal Open Source process at OSCon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzL6Zoy_ndk&list=UUP_lo1MFyx5...

I think things like this are a good way to get companies more aligned with contributing to open source, even aside from the mammoth technology companies already involved. I know that for many companies, the decision not to open source parts of their software isn't based on any idealogical disagreement with open source, but because their software projects haven't been designed with open sourcing as a goal, and if they can now take that into account when starting new projects, I'd expect that you might see a lot more open source software. So I think an organization that helps foster that can provide a lot of benefit.

And I'm not even a big open source zealot, but the number of companies who "get" the fact that participating in open source can be useful for lots of reasons (many better than "get the community to do work for free for us"), could certainly stand to be higher.

Re: Introducing //TODO for companies that are committed to open source

#29
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

No, very much inclusive. We'll be getting back to all the companies interested in the very short term.

If my company doesn't have anything open sourced but I would like to see how others do it to help pitch the idea, would I be welcome to join as an individual? Or should I just wait for the group's output?

Re: Introducing //TODO for companies that are committed to open source

#30
post #19

I'm surprised this came from Github considering there's nothing even remotely parsable anywhere. Maybe it's my (legit) dyslexia, but I can't understand what the hell this is. Secondly, Walmart labs?

I'm involved & left some thoughts in a neighbouring comment. Also: https://github.com/walmartlabs :)

Crazy! I had no idea they did stuff like that.
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