Usage Scenarios

Scenario 1: Corporate Software Archives
[Before] Company GoodSources develops software. Many of GoodSources projects and software modules, however, never make it out the door, for a variety of business, organizational, or technical reasons. Often, the information or software associated with such projects is lost over time. Project Secure was recently scrapped, and its project members left the company. Today, however, there's a group of people who need the code developed by project Secure. They have some information available, however, its hard to make sense of it. Nobody remembers the password for the machine on which the code was stored.

[After] Company GoodSources has installed a SourceShare™ service for all its internal software. All projects are stored in the service, along with discussions about the features for the software, and any bugs and their resolutions, if any. When Project Secure is abandoned, nothing unusual needs to be done. If any project in the future wants to use code from Project Secure, they can pick up right from where Project Secure left off. Indeed, because the names and emails of all people who knew anything about the code are still available in the mailing list archives, some people were able to track down the past participants on the Internet and get some badly needed explanations.

Scenario 2: Cross-Learning across the Enterprise
[Before] Tom is an exceptional programmer in company WonderSources. Tom's friends in WonderSources know this and are always turning to Tom for programming help. Tom is obliging to his close friends and project participants. So, Tom shows them his code and helps some other programmers in his company, but he simply does not have the time and bandwidth to help many more programmers in WonderSources. Hence, programmers in WonderSources, who are not close to Tom, cannot easily learn or benefit from Tom's expertise.

[After] Tom is helpful person, so in the spirit of Open Source™, whenever he codes up some interesting programming trick, he puts out his code and its associated information in the Internal SourceShare™ service running in WonderSources. The word spreads, and his software is usually listed as one of the top downloaded or viewed software. Now, even people who did not know Tom existed in the company, often view his software just for curiosity. Indeed, the beautiful asynchronous event manager that Tom coded up is now almost ubiquitous in all of WonderSources software servers.

Scenario 3: Multi-Corporation Collaboration
[Before] Company BioSciences is working on a new drug and its scientists have been writing several test software programs for the drug experiments. BioSciences recently formed a collaboration with several other companies, including GenoSciences and CioSciences, to speed the development effort on the drug. The scientists in the three companies are stuck, however, as its hard for them to effectively share the software with each other. Company BioScience's IT people are very uncomfortable with establishing VPN connections for each of the collaborators. The scientist cannot email code back and forth, as it goes in the clear over the Internet.

[After] BioSciences has signed a corporate agreement with Zee Source, for setting up an external, controlled multi-party software collaboration infrastructure. When a project in BioSciences wants to establish a new collaboration, they simply inform Zee Source (via the web) of the people involved in the collaboration and their affiliation. Within half a day, Zee Source sets up a new, secure collaboration infrastructure for the project.