From OpenBRR

WATCH!! This is a draft, feedback is welcome.

Project Overview

OpenBRR is an open initiative to learn about what are the ingredients for open source software to become business ready. It packages the knowledge in a framework to assess OSS business readiness in the form of BRR framework.

Our efforts can probably be grouped in the following manner:

• Analytical studies, through cultural observations, etc.

This helps us learn what works and what doesn't. These are items that should go to our Articles page in the wiki. We should however solidify these observations through discussion in the forum.

• Empirical studies, through information gathering.

This is what we are doing in the data team. We want to extend works that have been started by FLOSSmole, http://sourceforge.net/projects/ossmole. This helps us learn facts like what is the critical mass, critical age, etc for projects to mature. Fruits that we have already obtained are for example knowledge that SF projects that declare themselves "Mature" are most likely dead, and projects with more bugs reported, are usually mature.

• Knowledge organization and presentation, the BRR framework.

BRR really is a framework to observe and to report the presence of all the successful OSS ingredients in an initiative. The FO, taxonomy, etc are in here, because they organize how the knowledge is presented.

Of course these efforts need to be run in an iterative manner, otherwise we will never finish. Intel, CMU-West and SpikeSource collaborated in the first round. They want the community to drive the subsequent rounds.

Surrounding those three efforts is the fourth category:

• Infrastructure and other supportive works.

This includes the website (tools & content), defining semantic web protocols, aggregating information like this in the wiki, pr, education & evangelistic works, etc.