TY - JOUR T1 - Open Source as Community JF - Open Source Business Resource Y1 - 2007 A1 - Nelson Ko AB - What does it really mean to participate in an open source software community? If a company's open source strategy is limited to acting as end user of open source software, is there a business need to understand the nature of open source communities? Should it be the goal of all businesses to become an active participant in open source communities, or become recognized as a significant contributor? Business users of open source software can broadly be divided into those who use open source software as end-users, and those who incorporate underlying open source technology into their products and services. This article will first address both these groups with the important facets of understanding and evaluating community in the selection of open source software, and then elaborate on the role of active participation in open source communities to enhance the value that can be obtained from the use of open source. It is based upon lessons I've learned from becoming progressively involved in a particular open source software community, Tikiwiki, and comparisons with other open source communities which I've made to identify commonalities and differences. PB - Talent First Network CY - Ottawa UR - http://timreview.ca/article/78 IS - September 2007 U1 - Citadel Rock Nelson Ko is the founder and CEO of Citadel Rock Online Communities Inc. (http://citadelrock.com), providing solutions for online collaboration using wikis, social networking and multimedia messaging. He is an active contributor to the Tikiwiki open source project. Nelson has held positions in Hewlett-Packard and Singapore Telecom, and architected solutions brought to market across the world for companies such as Trans World International Interactive and Telstra. He holds an M.A. Economics degree from the University of Toronto, and is currently working on a dissertation "Building intellectual and social capital in online knowledge communities" in the M.A.Sc. Technology Innovation Management program at Carleton University. ER -