Business Success with Open Source

Chapter 9Establish Effective Inbound Policies and Procedures

Say “policies and procedures” to many people and their eyes start to unfocus, their mind wandering to the land of Anywhere but Here. Through our treatment of policies and procedures, we as humans have given them a bad reputation to the point where many people mentally check out when faced with them. We make them difficult to understand, difficult to follow, and difficult to care about. This is a challenge for companies looking to embrace inbound FOSS within their organization, but there’s hope.

The two most common mistakes I see with companies’ inbound FOSS policies and procedures (P&P) are either making them too restrictive and cumbersome, which encourages people to ignore or work ...