They have posted about this release on their blog. This is an amazing example of a blog post! It has all the right stuff to interest people in their product and really raises the bar for others when it comes to making an announcement of a free/open source release.

Screenshot of Polycraft by Wonderstruck, http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesAustin/20130502/191591/Turbulenz_Engine_goes_open_source.php

Explanation of why they went free/open source:

We’ve had a lot of interest in the Turbulenz Engine via our SDK packages and many of the people who try it out have praised the features and performance. However, two issues that have often come up are any sort of restrictive licensing and the ease of getting things started.

By releasing the Turbulenz Engine as open source under a standard liberal MIT license we hope to ease the adoption costs and ensure that people don’t feel in any way restricted by using the Engine

How to get started:

If you want to take a look, the best place to start is the README which you can find on the Github project page and included in the source. This details how to set up a development environment and includes a short getting started guide on how to use the Turbulenz Engine APIs. From here we recommend going through the Getting Started guide and reviewing all the documentation online.

The engine is also available bundled in an easy to install SDK for Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux. This might be an easier option if you’re looking for a packaged-up and fully QA’d snapshot of the engine. All future SDK releases will contain the open source engine with the associated MIT license. (Earlier versions of the SDK were released with a partially open license which has now been deprecated.) The bundled SDK is available from the Turbulenz developer service.

How to contribute:

We know there is a large and growing community interested in HTML5 game development and we hope that people will find this project an empowering contribution to game and Internet technology domains. Now that the project is fully available as open source and easily accessible via GitHub all contributions are gladly welcomed. Please send the project a pull request or post a git diff patch on the Turbulenz Engine google group.

Please help spread the word to your friends and followers by sharing this announcement online. We want to make sure that anyone thinking about making a game with HTML5 is aware of Turbulenz as a free and open source solution that comes packed with high performance features.

The impact of these blog posts on your organization’s brand are very positive. With the smallest amount of effort, your organization can be seen as making a valued contribution to the free/open source community and can be seen as raising the quality of their products and services.

Here are some other great free/open source announcements:

• Sunlight Foundation announces Churnalism
• Universidad Carlos III de Madrid announces New Quantitative Analysis Tools
• Airbnb announces Rendr
• LinkedIn announces Rest.Li

Their announcement is a good example of how to announce a project. In the 1st paragraph they’re giving credit to the teams involved in building the project and they give us a brief overview as to the purpose of the project. The 2nd paragraph tells us how to use the project with links (very important!) to the project so that you can try it out yourself. They include a video tutorial to further explain how the tool works.

Further down in the article they tell us more about how the project was developed and link to another blog post with more details:

Sunlight’s Churnalism is based on a UK site of the same name and is driven by open-source text analysis technology dubbed SuperFastMatch, both developed by the awesome Media Standards Trust. For a deeper dive into the underlying technology and process behind the project, check out this detailed post from Drew Vogel, another developer on Churnalism.

There’s also a privacy concern with the project, so they clearly state and what they’ve done to mitigate that risk:

We understand the privacy sensitivities with an extension extracting text from what you read, so we’ve designed Churnalism to be quite customizable and never retain identifiable information such as your IP address. You can easily change which sites Churnalism runs on by going into the settings for the browser extension. We’ve provided a basic whitelist of major news sites, a listing of local news affiliates and the ability to let Churnalism run on any site with news or article in url, but all these can be removed or paired down (or expanded!) to whatever sites you’re interested in.

Unlike the announcement by Airbnb for their Rendr.js library or the announcement by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid for quantitative analysis tools, the announcement for Churnalism doesn’t state why the project has been released as free/open source, and they don’t try and play up why free/open source is important to them. This shouldn’t always be done; if there’s a way to promote your organization’s brand further and to state their commitment to collaborating in a free/open source community, it should be done.

To summarize, when you announce the first public version of your project, released under a free/open source license, you should do the following things:

• clearly state the purpose of the project, this will establish the target audience and the types of users to expect to use the project
• describe how the target audience can use the software
• answer these questions:
  • is there a demo?
  • can anyone download the software and run it?
  • can it be tried out on the web?
  • which platforms are supported?
• link to other blog posts or articles or Wikipedia articles that explain how your software works behind the scenes
• link to other blog posts that are testimonials and use cases of your software
• promote any other free/open source projects that your organization is working on or contributing to

I like a few things about this article:

they define “open source” with a simple definition,

Open source software is that which, once it is received, can be used any way one wishes: it can be redistributed (for free or for a fee) and modified, if one knows how to do so.

they mention an advantage of participating in free/open source development,

The main advantage for companies when they participate in open source software projects is that, because they are participating in a development community, they are sharing costs with the other participants, so company resources can be used more efficiently. “The risks come from there as well: you are dependent, as least partially, on how well, or how poorly the development community behaves,” warns the researcher.

they also state that free/open source is much more transparent and therefore much easier to verify for correctness,

The difference that exists in the evaluation process with respect to proprietary software is that, in the majority of open source software projects the data sources are public, because these projects are very interested in transparency. This makes it possible for anyone to analyze reliable data without the need to even have agreements with the projects. In the case of proprietary software this is impossible: it is only for authorized users who have a special agreement with the program’s producer.

They provide a reason for why they released it as free/open source in the first paragraph. There was a lot of demand by developers who are facing the same issues that led Airbnb to develop Rendr. To appear unselfish and community-oriented, they released the code. If they hadn’t, there would either be a backlash (they use free/open source but *never* contribute, how unfair!) or, less likely, the issue would be dropped and the demands would die down. Instead of letting the issue lie or facing a backlash, they turned it into an opportunity. Now they have gained the goodwill of thousands of developers who will also place trust in the quality of their code. They are now a more welcoming place and it makes it easier to hire developers since those developers will already have experience in their codebase!

Another great thing is that they link directly to the code repository, and more importantly, they link to a sample project template that uses their code, so developers can quickly get started.

The developers at Airbnb have given talks and presentations about Rendr. This is something that’s easy to overlook when releasing code or donating to a free/open source software organization. You can use the code as another talking point and build up your organization’s brand.

The end of the article is excellent because it ties in everything about free/open source at the company. They list other projects that are free/open source:

• Chronos
• Infinity.js
• Polyglot.js

Their listing includes a short description of each project which is a tip I offered in HowTo: Set up a Page to Promote Your Organization’s Free/Open Source Contributions.

They also link to their Twitter profile pages, making it easy for readers to follow along with new developments and announcements. Currently they have almost 2000 followers for their developer twitter account. This is another great way to build up your organization’s brand.

The very last sentence of the article includes a link to the jobs/careers page of Airbnb. They’re looking for new hires and leveraging the article to attract them. When there are more developers to choose from, there’s a higher chance that more talented software engineers are applying for the positions. Senior developers are looking for places that fit them and Airbnb hopes that with their transparency they can attract the right sort of people.

Why Participate and Collaborate with a FOSS Organization?

HP’s goal is to provide clients with high quality business systems that support hundreds of users and they rely on free/open source software to deliver on their promises. This is why they participate in these organizations, so they can guide the development of software and ensure that the quality is high. They provide some funding so that the core developers of their software can focus on improving that software.

Cisco’s goal is to provide the best networking solutions for clients. They too understand that they’re building upon solid foundations to provide these solutions and they contribute back. They realize that it reduces their time-to-market for their products.

Examples of Contribution Pages

HP Open Source

Take a look at the HP Open Source page:

open source and linux at the HP website

The HP Open Source page lists the free/open source organizations that they participate in and collaborate with to, it lists them with a direct link to the organization’s website. They also list events that they sponsor.

Cisco Open Source

Now take a look at the Cisco Open Source page:

Cisco’s page lists blog posts about their most recent contributions and why they do it:

open source contributions of cisco

Cisco collaborates with the open source community to reduce time-to-market for Cisco solutions, and to help partners develop applications designed to enhance the collaborative experience.

open source communities web page on the Cisco systems site

Cisco has another page where they list their sponsorships and the free/open source organizations that they participate in and collaborate with. There are a few sentences describing each community/organization and either a specific contribution made by Cisco or why that organization is important to them. They also include direct links to those organizations.

A Template For Your Own Organization’s Contributions Page

Here’s what your organization’s contribution page should include:

• Free/open source communities and foundations that your organization participates and collaborates with
  • include direct links to the community or foundation’s home page
  • include a short description, taken from their website or of your own wording
  • highlight any sponsorships and donations made to the community or foundation
• Projects that your organization has contributed code or documentation to:
  • a short description of the project
  • a direct link to the project’s home page
  • if there are blog posts about the project on your organization’s blog, include links to them
• Conferences and hackathons that have been sponsored
  • a short description of conference (when and where it took place or when it will take place in the future)
  • a direct link to the conference page
• If your organization has a developer-oriented blog, include a link to it
• If there are blog posts, news articles or press releases from around the web that highlight your contributions, mention them and link directly to them. Mentions in newspapers or popular tech blogs should be listed first
• If your organization hosts a wiki, link to it

Don’t worry if your organization has only made a few contributions; every contribution counts when you’re building your brand and reputation for only using the best quality software to deliver products and services to customers and clients.

Do not mention the dollar amount of any donations on the page or how much it cost to sponsor a conference or hackathon. This isn’t necessary and it can tarnish your brand by making it look as if you care more about dollar amounts rather than the real value that the software you use contributes back to your organization. It can also look as if it places the dollar amount above the amount of effort that other developers have put into working on the software.

Examples of Implementing the Template

Example #1: Open Imagination Source Inc.

Let’s take a look at applying this template with an imaginary organization called Open Imagination Source Inc.

Here are the facts (in italics are facts included on their contributions page):

• Developed two free/open source software projects  of their own that use the Python programming language: CoolSite and AwesomeTool
• Based a project on someone else’s work (using the Django web framework) and modified it to meet their needs: CollaboratePlus is based on Collaborate
• Sponsored a trip for their developers to attend two conferences in 2012: DjangoCon 2012 and PyCon 2012
• They have donated $1,000 to the Python foundation
• They have paid $6,577 in license fees for proprietary software
• They use Microsoft Office for internal documents
• They use wiki software for external technical documentation
• They use wiki software for internal technical documentation
• They have a developer blog

Here’s how their website would look (excuse how plain it looks, the point is to demonstrate which information is included on their contributions page):

example of open imagination source inc using the contribution template

There is no mention of the dollar amount that was donated to the Python foundation, and there is no mention of any proprietary software that is being used.

Notice that they link to the new project, CollaboratePlus, also links to the project it’s based on, Collaborate, and offers a compliment.

They link to their developer blog twice and include some of the blog posts that mention the trips that they sponsored for their developers to take in 2012. There’s no need to highlight the specific conferences in a separate list on the page unless they were sponsoring the conferences.

They do not mention which wiki software they’re using because that’s usually linked to on the wiki itself. They only need to mention that they have public documentation available for their projects and link to the wiki.

Example #2: Imaginary-Mart

Let’s take a look at applying this template with an imaginary chain of retail stores. I’m using retail stores as an example because there may be a lot of free/open source software being relied on in the background that typically isn’t mentioned to the public. The reason for highlighting this is again to demonstrate that the company knows what they’re doing and is relying on the highest quality software to deliver whatever product or service they’re marketing to clients and customers.

Here are the facts for Imaginary-Mart (in italics are facts included on their contributions page):

• They use free/open source software for their inventory management system and checkout process in their physical stores and their ecommerce site
• They have developed an API for their site and sponsored a hackathon to use that API (this is a very real possibility: Campbell’s Soup for example sponsored a hackathon to use their soup-oriented API!)
• The hackathon that they sponsored cost them $10,000 to host and cater
• The hackathon took place in London and was reported on by the Guardian newspaper and was featured on the tech news blog TechCrunch
• They have not contributed any code to the inventory management system
• They have written publicly available documentation for using the checkout software in their physical stores
• They do not have a blog

The following picture is how they would implement the template.Notice that not all of the facts are used or only part of them are. For example, the cost of sponsoring the hackathon is only of interest internally to Imaginary-Mart, but blog posts about the event or articles in local news papers highlighting the event are of interest both internally and externally and highlight their contribution.

Example of Using the Contribution Page Template: Imaginary-Mart.

The last two facts seem contradictory. How can Imaginary-Mart contribute documentation without hosting it themselves on their own website? Typically, most FOSS projects have a wiki or some other location for documentation to be hosted. The links on Imaginary-Mart’s website will be direct links to those pages.

FOSDEM 2013 was sponsored by the following companies:

• Red Hat
• Cisco
• HP
• Oracle
• Google
• O’Reilly
• and others

Here are some interesting videos (click to download, they’re in the WebM format) for developers:

• Using Gerrit Code Review in an Open Source Project [download]
• LibreOffice: Cleaning and Refactoring a Giant Code Base [download]
• How We Made the Jenkins Community [download]

FOSDEM is only one of many conferences that can be sponsored in the free/open source community. Giving developers at your company the chance to attend one of these conferences can improve their skills and capabilities. Sponsoring this kind of conference shows a serious commitment to the free/open source software community.

Idea: encourage developers to present a lightning talk (a short 5 or 10 minute presentation) about anything they’ve worked on in the last few months. If possible, record a video of this and post it online, on your developer-oriented blog and make an effort to highlight the efforts of developers.

The blog post is a great example of one way for an organization to announce the release of a free/open source project. It describes the purpose of the software, the features that it has, the functionality that it provides, and they also give some details about their internal uses of other free/open source software.

In particular, they tell us exactly how long they’ve used this software they’re releasing which gives us confidence that the code meets LinkedIn’s high standards:

We’ve been using Rest.li for well over a year at LinkedIn. All our new services are built using it and we’ve converted many of our pre-existing services over. We think it’s so important to have a uniform set interfaces that represent our data that we’re aggressively migrating all, yes all, our services to Rest.li. And we’re already well into this transition with many core services that power our site using Rest.li, including people following, our recommendation engine systems and the network update stream on the homepage.

It also gives us confidence that they won’t abandon the project a few months after releasing it. This increases the chances of a community of developers forming around the project.

• GStreamer, the free/open source multimedia kit
• PiTiVi, a video editor for GNU/Linux
• WebKit, the web browser engine used by Google Chrome and Apple Safari

You can see the full list here.

They hire employees who are dedicated to working on free/open source software that they use and consult on.

Collabora is very involved in the free/open source software community and their developers regularly make appearances at conferences of interest to the community. Their blog is full of posts mentioning these events and their work on the above mentioned projects.

They know full well that their reputation as a software engineering consultancy is dependent on how confident clients that their work is high quality, that their work is reliable and that they can be counted on to deliver to deadlines. Collabora can point to a long list of contributions, actual code contributions to say, “yes we can deliver”.

Ways Your Company can Emulate Collabora

Other companies can emulate Collabora’s great example by doing the following:

• Encouraging developers to blog about their experiences
• Outlining a lightweight process for releasing code under a free/open source
• Dedicating time to allow developers to learn the process for submitting improvements to a project that the company relies on

Trapeze Media, a digital marketing agency based in Toronto has released some source code on GitHub. Their contributions are in Python for Django and in JavaScript for jQuery and other libraries. Most of the contributions are new projects rather than patches.

Their latest release is Bento, a Django app that adds editable image and content blocks. A few days later, they also released Carton, a Django app for maintaining wishlists and shopping carts.

Django is licensed under the Modified BSD License.

jQuery is licensed under the MIT License.

Collie is licensed using the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL). There are a lot of projects that favour the MIT License or the Modified BSD License but they forget that the LGPL is also an option when creating software and releasing it as free/open source software (in the future I’ll cover some of the different licenses that can be used for code in your organization when you release it as free/open source).

Surprisingly, Adobe is doing a lot of things with free/open source software. You can see some of their efforts here. They have a blog detailing their work with free/open source and a github repository for their code. Multi-billion dollar companies like Adobe are investing free/open source software because they know that this builds up their reputation, especially the Collie code which is superior to other JavaScript animation libraries. This quality translates into a great reputation and that reputation translates into adoption of their software, increasing the appeal of the Adobe brand. They can then leverage this to attract more developers and designers to their other products. Adobe is banking on the fact that their reputation will lead you to think, “We should buy the latest version of Photoshop (or some other Adobe software) since the developers and designers are praising Adobe’s code!”

This reputation for building high quality components and releasing those components to the world as free/open source lets others look at that work. It leads software engineers to put more trust in their products because the quality is high, and it encourages decision makers to put trust in that brand.

Red Hat has a nice article on opensource.com about the importance of reputation in the free/open source world:

You don’t have to be as big as Red Hat or Canonical in order to develop a reputation

…the more open you are about your business with the public, the easier it is to build a reputation that will win you customers [and clients].

Building a reputation with high quality code is just one way your organization can leverage free/open source software.