Facebook, which has already blazed trails in the open-source movement, launched a new project called TODO (short for “Talk Openly, Develop Openly”) that aims to help other organizations progress down the open-source route. This week’s Structure Show guest, James Pearce, who leads Facebook’s open source efforts, talks about why shared experiences and best practices are critical to assuring more successful use of open-source software.
It’s easy to start a project and throw it over the wall, but managing it once the software is in the wild is tricky business, Pearce noted. “The releasing part is relatively easy,” Pearce said. Once it’s launched and the community starts to adopt it is where some projects have run into problems, he noted.
Companies aboard Todo thus far include Box, Dropbox, Github, Google, the Khan Academy, Twitter and Walmart Labs.
Aaaaand, it was another frenetic week in the world of cloud — Rackspace took itself off the market (can you really do that?) and Cisco snapped up Metacloud for (a) its private OpenStack cloud business; (b) its private OpenStack cloud talent; or (c) both. So all of that is grist for the mill in the first 15 minutes of the show.
If you’re sick of the sturm und drang in cloud M&A then just fast-forward to hear Pearce. It’s a great listen.
SHOW NOTES
Hosts: Barb Darrow and Derrick Harris
PREVIOUS EPISODES:
What in the world will HP do with Eucalyptus? The company’s cloud chiefs give us a hint
The trials and tribulations of the API economy
Here’s why the democratization of big data really really should excite you. Yes, you.
In which we ask Aaron Levie how Box can compete with giants and what’s up with the IPO
Linode founder Chris Aker on why you don’t want to mess with The Onion



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