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Contents 1 Recruit: How do you recruit new developers? 1.1 Avoir 1.2 OpenMRS 2 Retention: How do you retain developers? How do you keep them interested? 3 Conflict: How to handle design conflicts / arguments? 4 Tools: What tools are used for development? 5 How are we going to make money 5.1 Mifos 5.2 Avoir 6 Internet Based 7 Collaboration 8 Ownership

Recruit: How do you recruit new developers?

Avoir

• No new developers except through (Avoir) project network (nodes)
• Vested interest for developers
• Sexy project like FireFox
  • Easy to attract (high profile)
  • Millions of users
  • Cool factor
• Avoir - no sexiness
• Individuals that use the software will become developers
• Masters program (Masters in Free and Open Source Software) in universities throughout Africa
  • Could be in PHP, Java, etc
  • Turn it into a research project
• Take a business as an intern (SME in Capetown called Maxor)
• Create new business by developing relationships with SME development
  • They use the framework and build modules
  • Platform benefits from the
  • Makes business opportunities

OpenMRS

• Pseudo-sexiness
• Fame aspect
• GSoC developers
• Get developers through universities
  • Trinity University
  • University of Rwanda

Retention: How do you retain developers? How do you keep them interested?

• Increase bus factor
• Can have turn over without affecting the project
• Encouragement, egos
• Using projects creates opportunity to develop new features (ex. Apache)
• Payment
• Taught formal university classes (revenue creates opportunities to create

Conflict: How to handle design conflicts / arguments?

• Bus factor - how many developers could get hit by a bus before the project would stall
• Design conflicts easily resolved through discussion
• Group discussion usually resolves all problems
• As long as modules adhere to coding standards, there won't be much conflicts since they are standalone)
• Innane conversations about design issues (flame wars) -> Painting the shed
• Conflicts usually revolve around the API/Core
  • Example: AJAX framework
    • Supports two frameworks, enable/disable
  • Short version of a method name
• Modular architecture allows code to be written that can later be added to core
• Some projects have hierarchy of conflict resolvers
• Stealing code?
  • Depends on the license
    • BSD, MacOS X derivative of FreeBSD
    • GPL
  • Depends on what you do with the software
    • No distribution -> ok
    • Distribution -> GPL comes into play

Tools: What tools are used for development?

• IRC - Both Chisimba and OpenMRS use it
• Chisimba - Realtime (voice, video, presentation, sketching)
• Tools mentioned this morning (Trac, wiki, forum, mailing list)
• Google Docs
• Skype, Yahoo, MSN, other chat
• Eclipse plugins for this -- research this
• RSS feeds
• Events - code sprints, usability sprints

How are we going to make money

Mifos

• • Build services around the software
  • They get support from IDRC, cannot charge for it
  • Services = Revenue (business model)
  • Managing IT, training, capacity building, installation, data migration, customization

Avoir

• Services = Revenue
• Setting up content managed servers
• Lots of features that make its very good software
• Create internships for SMEs

Internet Based

• Collaboration online is a big challenge
  • Code repository - gforge (fork of sourceforge)
    • Glue to hold all projects together

Collaboration

• Committed code to other projects Oracle (Debian installer), PEAR, etc
• Find other communities that are doing complementary work (build interfaces)
• Another way to get developers

Ownership

• If a person builds a module you can take the entire project and sell services around the OSS project
  • Demonstrates viability of the project
  • Promotes the application
• With certain licenses you can:
  • Sell the application on the CD
  • Provide services
  • Provide a paid download service
• With other licenses
• Viral licensing