Designed to help Open Source projects become successful

Mar 9, 2009 14:16 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has a long history of rivaling open source, a history that is now seeing the company increasingly warming up to the competitive technology and business model. An illustrative example in this context is the Microsoft Open Source Club, a project that made its debut on the software giant's repository for open-source projects: CodePlex. According to the once anti-open source poster boy, the Club was launched as an effort to help drive CdePlex projects closer to success.

“The Open Source Club (OSC) is a group of volunteers who contribute what they can to the specified open source project each month. If you’ve ever wanted to contribute to an open source project, but didn’t know where to start or didn’t have much time, this is your chance,” Sara Ford, Microsoft program manager, said. “Even if you just spend 20 minutes just writing up a bug report, a “how-to” user guide, or a blog entry about the tool, it counts! It’s about making the most of the time you have right now to contribute.”

In order for a project to be eligible for the Club it has to involve an OSI-approved license, be active on CodePlex and with an owner wishing to participate. Each month, the OSC Leadership Team will be choosing a different project to be the focus of the Club. For March 2009 the Open Source Club promotes Rawr, designed to explore and compare gear for World of Warcraft characters. Ford indicated that, via the Open Source Club, Microsoft hoped to attract contributors to the projects on CodePlex, circumventing impediments that were preventing people from lending a helping hand.

“One solution is to harness the potential of as many contributors as possible and focus their combined efforts into just one project at any given time. For example, imagine if 20 people wanted to contribute just an hour once a month to a project. That would be the equivalent of nearly 3 full-time days of contributions to a project,” Ford added. “Similar to a book club model, the Open Source Club will announce a project for the month. Then people in the community can choose how to assist that one project in whatever way makes sense for him or her.”