We get lots of questions about the OpenLogic Expert Community program. The FAQs below answer the most common questions we receive, but please don't hesistate to contact us if you have additional questions or concerns.
About the Community
How It Works
About Payment
What is the OpenLogic Expert Community?
The OpenLogic Expert Community is a group of open source developers that have agreed to help resolve issues for enterprises using open source. They are paid for their help. The OpenLogic Expert Community provides enterprise customers with easy access to the committed, passionate and expert people behind open source projects. OpenLogic offers enterprises a support service with a single point of contact for support across hundreds of open source projects. OpenLogic's internal technical support team resolves basic issues. OpenLogic, in turn, contracts with members of the community to resolve more complex issues.
Why don't enterprises just use the mailing lists for support like everybody else?
Enterprises are often using hundreds of open source projects and they need easy ways to access support across all of these projects. Trying to obtain support through hundreds of email lists quickly gets too complex to manage. In addition, enterprises often require specific service levels for the software they use.
OpenLogic partners with the Expert Community to create a support model that provides a guaranteed response time. Together, OpenLogic and the Expert Community can increase the use of open source software in the enterprise by providing the support model that large enterprises need.
Do I get paid to be a part of the Expert Community?
Yes, the OpenLogic Rewards program pays Expert Community members in cash upon successful resolution of an incident. OpenLogic charges enterprise for support. OpenLogic's internal technical support team resolves basic issues. OpenLogic, in turn, contracts with members of the community to resolve more complex issues.
What qualifications are needed to join the Expert Community?
You'll need to fill out a brief Membership Application. We are looking for committers or contributors for any of the 400 open source projects that we support. We are continuously adding more projects at customer request, so if your project(s) is not listed now, check back later. If you are not a project committer, we will ask for a reference from one of the project committers to sponsor or vouch for you. OpenLogic's Expert Community program is a great way to boost your experience and contributions to a project.
If you meet the criteria, we will ask you to sign a one page member agreement for the Expert Community. This agreement outlines our responsibilities and yours.
What will I have to do as a member of the Expert Community?
As a member, you will have access to a list of customer incidents that we need help resolving. You can choose which incidents to work on by "grabbing" them from the Expert Community Member portal, currently hosted on Jira. Once you sign up for an incident, we ask you to work on it expeditiously until resolution. Most incidents will take less than 4 hours to resolve.
What types of incidents will I work on?
Typical incidents are a Tier 3 or 4 issues from an enterprise customer to OpenLogic. Tier 3 and 4 issues are usually complex project specific issues involving integration, interoperability issues or requiring examination or change in the source code of the open source project.
What if I don't have much spare time to spend resolving issues?
We would like you to join to help us solve customer issues. However, if you are busy when an issue comes out, you can pass on it. You only sign up for or "grab" issues that you know how to resolve and that you have time to work on.
Why do I have to assign my copyright to OpenLogic?
We request that you assign us joint ownership to the copyright so that we can give the code to our customer while you check it in upstream. You still hold a full copyright to your code and we fully expect and support you checking your code in upstream to the project. We don't want our customers to be using a forked version.
If I join the OpenLogic Expert Community, how do I get paid?
Through the OpenLogic Reward program, you will receive 100 dollars per incident you resolve. ($100 is the starting point. The amount starts higher for more complex issues, and partial amounts may be paid if you contribute to an issue resolution but do not fully resolve it.) If an incident takes an unusually long time to resolve, you can appeal for more points. Points will be paid out via PayPal or check. You can also choose to donate your money to your favorite open source project or one of the charities on our list. OpenLogic also matches all payments with another 5% paid to nonprofit open source organizations like the Apache Foundation and the Free Software Foundation.
What's this about an iPod?
We usually offer a sign up incentive. After you solve your first successful issue, in addition to your regular cash payment, you also get a thank you gift. Our most recent gift has been an iPod.
I heard that you are only paying people in prizes. Is that true?
Nope. For each incident you resolve, you will receive 100 dollars. You can also donate your money to your favorite open source project or one of the charities on our list. OpenLogic also matches all payments with another 5% paid to nonprofit open source organizations like the Apache Foundation and the Free Software Foundation.
But I'm sure I read that you are paying with an iPod or Xbox. What if I don't want one?
After your first successful incident, in addition to your cash payment, you might also be offered a gift. If you don't want the gift, you can request the cash equivalent to our cost for the gift.
Is payment limited to $100? What if an incident takes a long time to resolve?
Most incidents are resolved very quickly — typically in an hour or two. If an incident takes a long time to resolve we have a simple appeals process to request additional money.
If I'm not in the US will I still get paid in US dollars?
You will have the choice to take your payment in US dollars or your local currency. If you choose to take payment in your local currency, we will pay the equivalent of 100 USD in your local currency based on the current exchange rates. You will not have to pay any currency exchange fees.
What about taxes?
You would need to pay any applicable taxes according to the laws of your local country. For US residents, OpenLogic will issue a 1099 form to any member that we pay over $600 per calendar year, per US law.
Can I make enough to do this full-time?
At this point, we would not recommend that anyone quit their job to become a member of the OpenLogic Expert Community.
Will the terms of this program change?
When we post an issue to be resolved, we will also post the dollars you will earn if you resolve the issue. We won't reduce the amount we are offering, but we can increase the points through our appeals process.
We have modified our legal agreement a couple of times at the Expert Community's request to make it clearer that are intentions are for any code that is written to go back to the project.
This program is just launching so we will be looking for additional feedback from our Expert Community members as well as other open source developers. We may make changes to the program from time to time based on feedback we receive. We want to make sure that this program works for the open source developers in the Expert Community, so if we find out we got something wrong in how the program works, we want to be able to fix it. Help us keep the dialog going. Feel free to contact Dave McLoughlin at olxc@openlogic.com with any questions or feedback.