How to Sponsor an Open Source Sprint

June 10, 2009, 12:59 PM —  ITworld — 

Your company's IT department probably depends on at least one open source application. The software does the job, is budget-friendly, and it has an active open source community which is constantly upgrading the application. But few applications are perfect, whether proprietary or open source. While the software may do most of what your business needs, you may consider having a few in-house developers add customizations. That's a perfectly reasonable idea. But there may be a better way that benefits the community, is dirt cheap, and oh yeah - is also fun.

In short: In an open source sprint, you can add new functionality to your most important application for less money than your marketing department spent last month on a single fancy client dinner.

A sprint (sometimes called a Code Jam or hack-a-thon) is a short time period (three to five days) during which software developers work on a particular chunk of functionality. "The whole idea is to have a focused group of people make progress by the end of the week," explains Jeff Whatcott, senior vice president of marketing for Brightcove.

An open source project may organize a sprint on its own, but it's also possible for your company to sponsor such an event. Doing so is easier, faster, and less expensive than an IT manager may imagine. Here's what's involved, based on input from several sponsoring organizations. Perhaps you'll be inspired to sponsor a sprint yourself.

It cost how little?!

For many IT managers, the most compelling reason for the company to sponsor a sprint is financial, because you just might be able to cover the costs out of petty cash.

That's because a sprint's basic logistics are fairly simple. For example, the sprint being organized by Brightcove's Whatcott will be held at the online video platform company's offices in Cambridge, MA. Brightcove, which wanted to help the Drupal community improve its video support in the content management system, will give the open source developers a conference room, provide a projector and Internet access - and then will mostly get out of the way.

As another example, ONE/Northwest, a Seattle nonprofit that provides technology and communications strategy assistance to environmental advocacy organizations, organized a two-day sprint to focus on adding specific functionality to an add-on module for the Plone content management system. The half-dozen or so developers were local, with one exception. "We covered travel expenses to bring lead PloneFormGen developer Steve McMahon to Seattle from his home in Davis, CA," says Jon Stahl, director of web solutions at ONE/Northwest. "Our total 'hard' cost was on the order of $300." ONE/Northwest provided the office space and beer.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Close

On Twitter now

open source

Powered by Twitter
You are logged in | Sign out
Sign in and post to Twitter

What are you thinking?

Cancel Tweet sent

On Twitter now

Comments

Clarification

Great article. I wanted to clarify one important item about the Drupal media sprint sponsored by Brightcove, which is that the sprint hasn't actually happened yet. Our original target date didn't work out, so we're working to reschedule.


My comments about how to succeed with sprints were based on my experiences working to schedule the Brightcove sprint, and my similar experiences with sprints at Acquia, an open source company where I worked last year.


I very much want to create successful win-win relationships with multiple open source communities at Brightcove, and I'm certain that hosting sprints and other forms of collaboration will be part of that.

Jeff Whatcott
Brightcove
| reply

tl;dr

tl;dr
| reply

Thanks

Thank you for the clarification. We amended the 6th paragraph to reflect that. Let us know how the sprint turns out!
| reply
peer-to-peer

Esther Schindler
If the comments are ugly, the code is ugly

claird
SVG a graphics format for 21st century

pasmith
Take Chrome OS for a test spin

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Solaris Tip: Have Your Files Changed Since Installation?

sjvn
64-bits of protection?

jfruh
Android fragments vs. the iPhone monolith

mikelgan
What Gizmodo missed about the Pro WX Wireless USB disk drive

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace