Momjian: How Companies Can Effectively Contribute To Open Source Communities

“While open source communities are primarily made up of
volunteer contributors, company involvement is always welcome.
Companies often bring fresh prespective, ideas, and testing
infrastucture to a project. Companies can also often fund
developers to add features that require more time than a single
volunteer contributor can afford. But, unfortunately, company
involvement requires a new approach to development. This article
outlines some of those differences and ways of maximizing the
effectiveness of company contributions to open source projects.

“Open source communities are primarily made up of individual
contributors. When employees contribute, their approach is often
different than if they were acting as individuals. This is because
employees working in open source communities have two bosses–the
companies that employ them, and the open source community, which
must review their proposals and patches…”

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