Название: Business Success With Open Source: Strengthen Your Business With Free and Open Source Software
Автор: VM (Vicky) Brasseur
Издательство: The Pragmatic Bookshelf
Год: March 2025 (Version: P1.0)
Страниц: 630
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf, epub (true)
Размер: 10.9 MB

Free and open source software (FOSS) is everywhere and is the driving force behind nearly all software developed today. It doesn't matter what industry your company is in: Learning more about how to use, contribute to, and release FOSS can be the strategic edge that your company needs. With the proper knowledge and approach, open source can form the cornerstone of a digital transformation effort, increase developer retention, decrease recruiting cycles, ensure reliable security, and reinforce the company brand. All this and more, by shifting your company's FOSS strategy from accidental to intentional.

Free and open source software (FOSS) is the whetstone of the cutting edge. Your company is almost certainly using FOSS right now, whether you know it or not. FOSS is already part of your company, so you need to know how to manage it effectively and strategically. If you're participating in a digital transformation effort, or reducing business risk, or building a product roadmap, or creating a company or team strategy, or if you need to round out your existing open source knowledge by filling in some gaps, this is the information you need.

Discover how to use, contribute to, and release open source projects effectively and strategically for your business. Avoid the dangers inherent in license compliance and other intellectual property matters. Incorporate community management to bolster the sustainability of projects that are critical to your company. Manage your software supply chain to track and maintain the projects your company relies on. Create policies and procedures both for inbound and outbound FOSS engagement. Develop tactics for community management to ensure corporate open source efforts remain on target for business goals.

Build your free and open source software strategy and go from accidental to intentional.

What You Need:
No software requirements, just a desire to help your company succeed through proper open source engagement.

Who Should Read This Book?
We’ll prevaricate and say otherwise in public, but if you corner most authors, you can get them to admit that they’d like everyone to read their book. They’d like you to give it as presents at baby showers and graduations, as rewards for accomplishments big and small, and as thinking-of-you gifts to long-lost friends and lovers. That it may be a textbook about orbital dynamics doesn’t matter; the more eyes on the work, the happier the author. However, when we return from dreamland into the real world, we sadly confess that, no, not everyone will get value out of our work. This book, alas, is no different.

Since that value is the most important thing here, the question of who should read this book is less relevant than why someone should read this book. What problems are you, the reader, facing and can this book help you with them? If your answer really is “orbital dynamics,” then this will not be the book for you (maybe you should attend some baby showers or graduations). If your answer is that you need to work with Free Software or open source in some way in your job, then you’re in the right place.

If you’re faced with participating in a digital transformation effort, or reducing business risk, or building a product roadmap, or creating a company or team strategy, or if you need to round out your existing FOSS knowledge by filling in some gaps, then you’ll get a great deal of value out of the book in your hands right now.

While the usefulness of the book is not limited only to this venue (I hope), the expectation is that you’re reading it in some sort of a business context. You are a leader of some sort in your company or organization, be it C-suite or line manager, marketing or programming, entrepreneur or chairperson of the board, strategist or tactician. Your company’s business model may not turn on creating and selling software products, but it does rely on software in some way to deliver value to its customers.

In the case of companies undergoing digital transformation, your company may now be experiencing whole new paradigms of software, such as microservices, containers, continuous integration and delivery, DevOps, and cloud computing. All of these situations depend upon FOSS. Your company and your career will thank you for reading this book and learning about how to make the most of free and open source software in a business context.