[Tischer.s]

Dear users, contributors and XBMC Team,

my name is Sebastian Tischer and I am student of business and economics at the university of technology in Dresden.
At the end of these studies it is mandatory to write a bachelor thesis which is the last exam before having officially finished the studies.

The topic of my thesis is: "Open Source Software - An analysis of the integration of external knowledge carriers based on selected examples".

What does this topic actually mean?

I am investigating and analyzing various open source companies about the way they handle external knowledge of users, contributors and developers.
These information will be compared with the structure of the company, the used tools, techniques and documentations.

At the end I want to draw a conclusion with the effect, telling which company makes the best use of external knowledge and where might be improvement.

For that purpose I have a few question prepared and would be very happy if you support me answering these questions in order to complete my survey and the thesis resulting on them...
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1. What size does the company have?
- employes
- users
- developers

2. On what business model is the company based?

3. How are eventual costs handled? With what are you earning money?

4. Which Web 2.0 tools are used to efficiently use the knowledge of the user group?

5. Which technical resources are used for development, documentation, feedback, bugs, features, patches, mailings etc.?

6. Who is allowed to contribute to the source code?

7. Which criteria need to be fulfilled to contribute?

8. What control mechanisms exist to check which code gets into the productive system?

9. How is the approval process going on to let people contribute?

10. What can be contributed by developers or users? Where is the cut within the development process (untouched parts of the application)?

11. Are your documentations being updated on a regular basis?

12. How do you motivate the community to contribute?
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If you don't like to get mentioned as source within these paper, then this is no problem! I will only use the given information then and treat your answers completely anonymous...

If you have any further question regarding my survey feel free to ask them anytime.
Best wishes and thank you in advance

Sebastian Tischer

[spiff]

i suggest you make some investigations before mass-spamming the floss world. there is no company behind xbmc.

[Ned Scott]

i suggest you make some investigations before mass-spamming the floss world. there is no company behind xbmc.

I assume these are just stock questions that can still be applied (organization instead of company, etc). He already knows the basics of what's behind XBMC because I was talking to him on IRC. I suggested that he also make a post on the forums so that anyone else who wanted to provide info could do so.

[Tischer.s]

i suggest you make some investigations before mass-spamming the floss world. there is no company behind xbmc.

I don't know where I am mass spamming here with asking a few questions... This is the only way I asked beside an email to the press quite a while ago and another question in the IRC chat!

If you ever written an thesis you need multiple sources to prove an certain answer! And for that purpose I wrote this questionnaire here!

Some wikis might be outdated so it is good to refere on someone who told you maybe the same!


If you could tell me where I can find some exact data about how many developers, users and team members work for XBMC please show me where!

Some other questions can and are already answered by myself but definitely not all!

Thats why I post it here like Ned Scott already told you!

If someone still can help me with these unanswered question I would be very happy...

1. What size does the company have?
- employes
- users
- developers

2. On what business model is the "company" based? If you accept donations you need to have an declared modell! There can nothing be found online! I know you are an team of volunteers but who is responsible for the money, the hardware and so on? Is there an mother company/foundation...?

12. How do you motivate the community to contribute? Any events or prices for most active developers?

Thank you in advance!

[natethomas]

Let's see if I can help.

1.
Employees: Zero (at the moment, nobody at XBMC is on an XBMC payroll, though I know at least a few have done contract work for outside organizations)

Users: We have no real way to track this. A recent update to TheMovieDB addon was downloaded 1.5 million times over the past month and a half, which suggests our user base is still below 2 million and probably above 1 million, but it's hard to say exactly how many users actually connected to the internet on how many boxes over the past month and a half.

Devs: Once again, it's difficult to say. If you mean anyone who has submitted code in the past year, it's more than 100. If you are talking about devs who regularly submit code and otherwise support the project, it's probably just under 40.

2. The XBMC Foundation is a 501c3 charitable Foundation. The Foundation receives income in three ways. First, through donations by users and others. Second, through sponsorships. And third, through sales from its online CafePress store. The money received by the foundation is currently used to fund travel to expos/conventions and to purchase necessary hardware for the development of XBMC. In addition to hardware purchased by the Foundation, vendors occasionally donate hardware to help developers ensure XBMC runs on a particular platform. For example, Pivos has donated hardware to ensure that XBMC ran on Android. Finally, web hosts donate server time and the Weather Underground "sponsors" API calls to its weather service.

All decision making as to purchases occurs either through the Board of the Foundation listed in the wiki, a general vote of Foundation members, or a sub-committee designated by the Board. Generally speaking, members of the Foundation tend to be those individuals listed as active members of Team XBMC. Admittance to the Foundation is predicated on a certain amount of work performed in furtherance of the software, including but not limited to submitting code, writing support documents, and evangelizing, and an invitation and vote by the Board or an appointed committee.

12. XBMC rarely participates in prize give aways, presuming instead that participating community members will see the value in giving back to the community, whether through code, online help, or evangelizing, by the continuous and rapid improvement of the software that the entire community enjoys. Participating, as they say, is its own reward. The highest non-physical reward bestowed upon community members is an invitation to join Team XBMC and have a more vocal say in the direction of the software over time. The team does attempt to have a meet-up every year at SCALE in Los Angeles, CA and Linuxtag in Berlin, Germany that users are invited to attend. These meet-ups are open to all though, and certainly not limited to active developers.

[Tischer.s]

Hello natethomas!

Thank you very much for your great help, exactly this was what I was searching for! Great qualified and helpful answers!

I am fine now with all information concerning my questionnaire!

Really thank you very much!

Best wishes

Sebastian Tischer