A successful project? An 'OpenFlow' approach.

It is a probable pre-condition for any new potential open source success that having something that is runnable and testable to use as being essential. All new Open Source communities will start with a few early users and those users will be hopefully be tomorrow’s developers so it is essential that this is recognised as early as possible.

A successful Open Source community will know that attracting quality external contribution depends on the ease by which the software code, documentation, project memory and other outputs can be accessed and improved upon by others.

So to this end in a community inspired project, it is reasonable for people to participate in order to satisfy their own needs, you might wish to call it ‘scratching an itch’.  So an individual’s main motivation may not be to build an entire community, but to solve a singular specific problem they face in their job, and in Digital Film production there are always new issues to be deal with and find a fix for, which is where we feel an Open Community and resource for those who wish to use it will be a valuable asset to the industry. For this reason, Open Source Cinema UK should be run in such a way that the process and community overhead do not get in the way of people pursuing their own interests and solutions.

So we wish to use tools that are appropriate to this community, film production, and to keep them to a bare minimum. Such tools should ultimately facilitate, and not dictate so much.

To support this early and frequent releases of any new software and hardware, through the Open Flow pipeline, are crucial for building a sustainable open source project. Releases should attract users, some of these users then become contributors, and more contributors make the project stronger. The downside of releasing early and often is that one needs to manage user expectations. Projects need to be clear about the status of their releases and draw attention to any known bugs in the documentation at all stages.

You do not need to be a software developer to contribute to an open source project. The code, documentation and artwork that make up an open source project have all been created, tested, used, discussed and refined by members of that project community. These processes can be broken down into multiple tasks, requiring different skills, levels of involvement and technical expertise.

The quickest, easiest and most significant way to provide such support in the early stages of involvement is for us to answer newcomers’ questions. These are often best answered by those who have themselves recently experienced the same issues. By answering questions from newcomers, you will also be helping the project by saving the developers' time.

A successful project, Open Source Digital Film Production solutions and services, we certainly hope so.