The Long Road To (Software) Freedom

At the Community Leadership Summit in Portland back in July, I moderated a session called “The Death Star User Group”, aimed at community managers working for large corporations in the various stages of their journey towards software freedom. Community managers in that situation often have to deal with negative perceptions of their employer. I think having a model for the journey that a company is taking towards eventual embrace of software freedom is valuable.

The path to software freedom at Sun involved several steps that are common to corporations taking this journey (I think Sun was reaching stage 6 before it was taken over). Here’s a quick sketch of the seven steps I’ve seen in multiple corporate journeys towards software freedom. I hope over time to develop it into a more detailed description...