Does anyone with any experience of corporate Open Source strategies?

[Fraser Adams <fr...@blueyonder.co.uk>]

Hey all,
Slightly odd question, but I figured where best to ask this than the 
mailing list of an Open Source project.

My employers make use of a fair bit of Open Source software including 
Qpid. To be honest it's mostly been in "take" mode, which has never felt 
ideal but moving into something a little more balanced doesn't seem easy 
for various reasons.

Does anyone out there have any experience with "corporate" Open Source 
strategies especially from the perspective of large organisations, which 
for the most part seem to be a degree more conservative.

I'm especially thinking of organisations who have gone through the 
process of opening up equities that they've had proprietary for some time.

I guess another thing is the question "what makes a good Open Source 
project", as I see it it's all very well Open Sourcing an equity, but 
what's the point if it's not something that grabs the attention of a 
community - clearly there are loads of Open Source projects that have 
withered on a vine.

If anyone has done this sort of thing:
a) What advantages has it brought your organisation?
b) What disadvantages has it caused?

As well as the equities angle I'm also interested to understand what 
mechanisms organisations employ when they pay their own employees to 
work on established Open Source projects, it seems to me that developer 
contributions on an in-house project can be more easily "measured" by 
people who care about such things, so do organisations doing this sort 
of thing employ any metrics or is it a slightly more grown up trust 
approach?


Many thanks,
Frase

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