This is a follow-up to #25. I think we should make it clearer what the criteria for open companies are, and map them directly to the table columns.
I would suggest, for example, the following list:
Openness pledge
Examples: public commitment to open source; blog post outlining the company's open operation practices and/or the philosophy behind them.
Note: the "Statement" column of the table would be merged here.
Open primary product
Examples: open source software (or open source hardware designs) for at least the basic (but still functional) version of the company's primary products or services.
Note: the naming change is to make the "primary" part explicit.
Open development process
Examples: public issue trackers or roadmaps; open development-related communication channels (mailing lists, chat rooms, forums, etc.).
Note: this was previously called "Open channel", and removed in #36 as it was mostly empty.
Open finances
Examples: public revenue reports; transparent salary information.
Note: renamed from "open finance" to "open finances", which sounds more natural to me.
My idea is to have these criteria listed immediately above the table, sort of like a legend, including concrete and illustrative examples for each criteria. This would replace the current "What is an open company" section.
Some questions I have:
What other examples could we provide of open primary products? We would want to be able to expand the list beyond mostly software companies, or otherwise explicitly embrace them.
What other examples could we have for the "Open finances" criterion?
Can we have a clearer/shorter name for the "Open development process" criterion? Or do we rely on the examples to make it clear what we mean?
Do we count blog posts for the openness pledge, or stick to stand-alone pages on the companies' websites? And what do we do about single-page sites or highly dynamic ones that don't allow deep linking straight to the openness pledge part?
Should we include companies with an openness pledge if none of the other criteria are fulfilled? I.e. those who "talk the talk but don't walk the walk"? Conversely, do we want to include the opposite? I.e. companies that, for instance, release their products as open source but nowhere make their commitment to openness explicit.
As a follow-up to the previous question: do we make any of the criteria mandatory, or simply require at least one/two of them to be fulfilled, regardless of which?
Can we somehow incorporate open/democratic management practices as well? I.e. worker-owned cooperatives and similar flat hierarchical arrangements. Should we? That is, would it be in-scope for our project to count openness within the companies, or focus in how the companies interface with the external environment?
This is a follow-up to #25. I think we should make it clearer what the criteria for open companies are, and map them directly to the table columns.
I would suggest, for example, the following list:
My idea is to have these criteria listed immediately above the table, sort of like a legend, including concrete and illustrative examples for each criteria. This would replace the current "What is an open company" section.
Some questions I have: