Shane is founder of Punderthings℠ LLC consultancy, helping organizations find better ways to engage with the critical open source projects that power modern technology and business. He blogs and tweets about open source governance and trademark issues, and has spoken at major technology conferences like ApacheCon, OSCON, All Things Open, Community Leadership Summit, and Ignite.
Shane Curcuru serves as VP Brand Management for the ASF, wrote the trademark and branding policies that cover all 200+ Apache® projects, and assists projects with defining and policing their trademarks, as well as negotiating agreements with various software vendors using Apache software brands. Shane is serving a seventh term as an elected Director of the ASF, providing governance oversight, community mentoring, and fiscal review for all Apache projects.
Otherwise, Shane is: a father and husband, a BMW driver and punny guy. Oh, and we have cats! Follow @ShaneCurcuru and read about open source communities and see my FOSS Foundation directory.
Authored Comments
Similarly in trademarks, while not as much a legal issue as a community one, the GNOME trademark battle with Groupon is worth reading about:
http://www.gnome.org/groupon/
Also known as how to antagonize open source groups into running highly successful crowdfunding campaigns to defend their brands.
Two other key drivers to encourage people to volunteer:
- Making it easier to find ways that humanitarian organizations affect different locations/groups/whatever that matter to me. This is kind of like answering "if I spend time here, what disadvantaged person/pet/place will be helped and how", but on the prospective scale. I like defending the environment, cats, and people looking for better jobs: which charities are most likely to impact my interests? I bet this will sometimes be in unexpected ways, which is how charities could attract new contributors.
- How can I showcase my involvement in this charity? With traditional code projects on github, it's easy. How can my data mapping or physical map verifying work get recognized in the larger open source context and not just within that charity? Where can I use a github or ohloh or similar contributor page to track my work in these humanitarian organizations in areas that aren't just bugfixes?
Just some other points to ponder!