I’ve been spending quite a bit of time recently reflecting on how Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) and our work in open source is evolving in a world where most of us don’t have as many resources as we need to support our open source work while at the same time, we’re experiencing an increasing reliance on open source as a key strategy for digital sovereignty. I started doing open source strategy work back in the very early 2000s at Intel, and in the 5 years before CHAOSS, I was in open source strategy roles at Pivotal and later VMware, so I’m looking forward to spending more time working with OSPOs as a consultant.
My recent conversation with Rachel on the Contribute: Beyond the Code podcast was a great excuse to reflect on some of what I’ve been thinking and writing about related to OSPOs. You can watch the full episode on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify.
We talked about how OSPOs can:
- demonstrate the value of open source work within an organization.
- have a bigger impact in open source when they go beyond compliance
- scale their efforts through documentation
- balance internal enablement along with external engagement
- track the most strategic open source projects for your organization
- responsibly sunset (archive) open source projects
- develop processes that make it easy for employees to engage in open source
Additional Reading: