Item174: Create page on why everything has to be made available as open source

We should create a page, that explains to new and existing members, why they should not keep any code or product for them only. That has a lot of disadvantages, that have to be made clear to everybody.

Advantages of sharing everything

• The community adds value to your work.
• The NextWiki-Software gets better.
• The real competitor is not another NextWiki-Consultant but Confluence, MediaWiki and SocialText! (This may be a tough lesson for a lot of us. But it is true. People tend to value things high, that they have knowledge of. If somebody loses a deal to another consultant within the community, that may look like a big problem. But the amount of business, that does not even come around, because Managers simply demand for a "Wikipedia" (results often enough in MediaWiki) or go straight to Confluence. That is the real threat!)
• You owe the community to give back your results. That is why you got the cool software initially.
• It is your duty according to the GPL to contribute your results back, isn't it?
• http://warpspire.com/features/contributing-to-open-source-makes-you-a-better-developer/ Contributing to open source makes you a better developer

Reasons for developers not to commit

• They did not want TWiki.net to profit from their contribution. (There are people who told me, that they are shy to contribute to NextWiki, because they fear, that TWiki.net will take over their work.) We need to convince such programmers, to restart contributing everything.
• People simply do not bother about giving back their changes.
• People shy away from the time that it takes to get "approved" as a programmer and to actually check-in. They might also just as well do not know how to do it.

I am envisioning a document, that makes clear to everybody, that we all need to stand together.

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Draft text for developers

Free as free beer	All software on this site is Open Source. If you have developed code in-house you can keep it that way - You owe us nothing.

But there are some real advantages of making your work Open Source and give your work back to the community:

1. Improve the quality of your work by letting Open Source work for you! Many eyes means that your code gets tested in different environments by different users. Next to having a large testbed, other developers will help you improving your code.
2. If you think that TWiki or Foswiki is worth to keep in your organization, you can help to create a larger user base. Your contributions can make the difference. How? More and better features means more users, which is good for continuity.
3. It is fun to work together and build a better product, even if it is a small plugin or change.
4. It is easy to make your work Open Source. Start with a request for access to subversion to let us know what you want and for us to get to know you. If you have any questions you are welcome at our irc://irc.freenode.net/twiki_fork #twiki_fork IRC channel or ask a question in the Support-area.

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"owe" and "duty" seem too strong to me.

http://drupal.org/node/323201 Why it is a good investment to contribute to Drupal? has points that we should be able to incorporate.

finally, we really need to mention the most(?) "selfish" reasons: which is that if you get your code integrated, 1) your upgrades and merges become easier, and 2) you have a lot of other developers, users, and testers helping to "maintain" your code.

-- WillNorris - 16 Nov 2008 - 06:44

Before writing the text it should be clear:

• Who do we target? Developers? Product owners? Managers? End users? All? If so, what messages are for whom?
• What do we want to achieve? Give insight? Set them to action? If so, what can they do?

-- ArthurClemens - 16 Nov 2008 - 11:17

All audiences is the right answer at the end, but we will start, with the programmers, I would say. Unfortunately there is a lot of uncommitted TWiki-code out there, that we want in the system. I added some thought above.

-- MartinSeibert - 16 Nov 2008 - 12:04

[Created a draft text, that was moved up ...]

-- ArthurClemens - 16 Nov 2008 - 12:19

I think we should shift the text in the community web and let it evolve there ...

-- MartinSeibert - 16 Nov 2008 - 13:30

I have created guidelines for writing better copy. Feel free to improve HowToWriteBetterCopy.

About this text: it should be found, so can we mark some places to link to it?

-- ArthurClemens - 16 Nov 2008 - 15:03

Arthur: Can we close this issue now?

-- MartinSeibert - 31 Jan 2009

Do we need to find a place for it?

-- ArthurClemens - 01 Feb 2009

I am closing this task now. Not sure if it had any outcome, nor if its message is good marketing. Long time no action -> close.

-- MichaelDaum - 10 Nov 2010