Business Success with Open Source

Onboard Outbound Contributors

If working with and contributing to free and open source software were straightforward, I wouldn’t be writing my second book on the subject. Asking people to work in an unfamiliar area and then expecting them to be successful all on their own is foolhardy at best and business malpractice at worst. If you want your initiative to be successful, you have to provide the training and support to set participants up for success. We provide onboarding materials for people who are new to the company, and there’s no reason why we can’t do the same for people who are new to an initiative.

This onboarding will take the form that makes the most sense for your organization. For instance, if there’s a training team that assembles ...