Ecosystem

This page is a draft only
It is still under construction and content may change. Do not rely on the information on this page.

Goals

1. An ecosystem of partners (either companies or educational institutions) participating in open source via the Red Hat family (RHEL, Fedora, RHEL rebuilds)
2. An enhanced reputation for Red Hat as a thought-leader and expert in implementing ideas via an open-source community strategy.
3. A dramatically improved experience for end users and potential customers. Present a one-stop shop for users to evaluate and purchase open source solutions.

Lead the Software Industry

Focus on ISVs

Stragetic open source ISVs come to us from two places:

1. Those defined by RHX, and working with that part of the company.
2. Those who come to us through any other channel, whose commitment to open source we find compelling.

THE MORE PURE A COMPANY'S COMMITMENT TO OPEN SOURCE IS, THE HIGHER PRIORITY WE GIVE THEM IN TRYING TO HELP.

• ISVs who are pure open source plays, and who are ready to commit time and engineering resources of their own into getting their stuff into Fedora are considered premiere accounts, and get high-touch attention from us.
• Community Architecture team needs to develop a stable of package maintainers in Fedora who are willing to take ISVs under their wing as they work to get things into Fedora and EPEL. This begins to feel like the idea of community consulting, a little bit. Or your "community TAM". We need folks with Fedora packaging expertise to be willing to hand-hold our most important partners as they dip their feet in the Fedora waters.
• Similarly, for the low-touch "accounts" or the folks who aren't too serious about devoting resources, we need to develop a wiki page that lays out the process that we are taking the more committed folks through. Good documentation practices will get us most of the way there.
• If we were really feeling motivated, we'd ask some consultants what a reasonable price for these kinds of services is, and convince Rachel Cassidy to help us sell it. (Max has already started to investigate this).

Actions

• Using FUDCon Boston and OSCON as meeting places for ISVs and as ISV recruitment vehicles.
• Identifying the pilot ISVs (mostly determined by which ISVs are most willing to step up) and using them to refine our "ISVs get their software into Fedora/EPEL" apprenticeship process.

Lead Computer Science Education

• Ultimately, Jack's education deck will provide backup support for this section.
• Small, innovative partners who are nimble enough to try and to do exciting things. Seneca. NCSSM.
• Large, established names that can draw us big press. Carnegie Mellon, which is a priority account insofar as they are actively working with us. But places like MIT, Caltech, etc. remain "strategic" in that if we can do something cool with them, it will get us great press.
• Perhaps LTSP will be added in here at some point.

Actions

• Jack is working on a separate slide deck/pitch that brings together all our education strategies in greater depth.
• Actively pursuing a deal with CMU for a linux lab/curriculum.
• Jack and Greg will visit Oregon State University to discuss foundation of "open source education foundation"

Lead Customer/User-driven Innovation

Build Awareness Worldwide

• Continue to look for opportunities to speak at events in which the right-minded sorts of people will be in attendance, and aggressively pursue any leads that come out of that.
  • Max has 3 talks scheduled in Europe + FUDCon from July - September.
  • Paul will speak at Utah Open Source convention.
  • Greg and Paul will be FSOSS in Toronto along with ChrisTyler of Seneca College.
  • Greg, Jack, and Karsten will be at OSCON.

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Notes

I. GOALS
  A. Partner ecosystem.  Defining and prioritizing ISVs with an
     open source focus.
     1. RHX (Zimbra/Zenoss/Jaspersoft/Alfresco/etc.)
     2. non-RHX but eager to work with RH/Fedora (Magento?)
     3. readiness to commit to the open source model, *with resources*
  B. Thought leadership.  Transforming the CS education space.
     1. Engage with small innovative schools (Seneca, OSU).
     2. Engage with major schools with major brands (CMU, MIT).
     3. Create aon Open Source Computer Science "Foundation".
  C. End user experience / User-driven innovation
     (Largely undiscussed, work with Gus?)
II. ACTIONS.
  A. Find volunteers to mentor ISV community / align with
     the new RHX ISV Engineering Manager
  B. Explore community TAM idea
  C. Talk with Gus
  D. Continue recruitment at ISV events
  E. Engage with Jim
  F. Introduce Max to Vincent Weyl at Alcatel
  G. Help Jack continue to develop his education deck