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Proposal for Organization & Communications Working Group. Allen Wilcox (VillageReach ) Mimi Whitehouse (JSI ). How to Organize OpenLMIS?. Initial questions Who can become a member? Who will sit on the board of directors? Who will serve as the Secretariat?
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Proposal for Organization & Communications Working Group Allen Wilcox (VillageReach) Mimi Whitehouse (JSI)
How to Organize OpenLMIS? • Initial questions • Who can become a member? • Who will sit on the board of directors? • Who will serve as the Secretariat? • How will the work plans be approved? • How will the organization raise money? • What if OpenLMIS • Is not a separate entity? • Is a place to develop standards? • Is a repository of shared value? • Develops organically rather than through a top-down structure?
Open Source Organization • Shared problem, common development effort, shared resource • Participants not subject to a common command structure • Development is consensual, grassroots, evolutionary • Leadership is required, but following is not mandatory • Voluntary participation encouraged through incentives • Extending limited resources • Access to broader talent pool • Shared resource provides foundation for enhanced results • Downsides • Additional investment to collaborate, modularize, document • Competitive advantage lost in shared resource space • Freeriding
Licensing Framework • License agreements help organize the effort by • Empowering users through source code access • Granting most rights to users vs. reserving them for the authors • Preventing users from restricting others • Eclipse Public License (EPL) (code/documentation) • Broad, royalty-free license to use, modify and distribute • Modifications must be contributed back to the shared resource • May incorporate into commercial products • No warranties or liabilities • Must attribute to original authors • Creative commons license (documentation) • Similar approach to EPL
Communications • Key considerations • How to support internal information share? • How to facilitate external promotion/advocacy? • What is the structure and process to accomplish the above? • Information share requirements • LMIS implementations - use cases, requirements, software • Documentation - user/developer guides • Discussion forum - queries to the group from within/outside • Resources – tools, documentation, whitepapers, collateral • Near-term priority is information share not advocacy
Proposal for Working Groups • For the fall • Three working groups • Volunteer participants organized by chair person(s) • Work on their respective tasks as defined today • Be prepared to report back to the full group early next year • Organization & Communications Working Group • Determine what additional organizational elements are needed for the two substantive working groups to be effective • Adopt communications tools to support internal/external information share • Determine website evolution