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? 2

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 3

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 4

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 5

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 6