OStatic

Earlier, Lisa talked about Funambol's addition of non-intrusive advertisements to their myFUNAMBOL portal, at least for a few phone models.Being the somewhat reluctant owner of a new Blackberry, and a Linux user, I had heard of Funambol. I knew it was open source software, and I knew that Funambol was one of a few applications that had reasonable success syncing BlackberryOS, and a few other platforms, with Linux.

MyFUNAMBOL portal has a few hiccups to iron out (it is still in beta), but it seems to be truly useful. The operating system used on the desktop could become a non-issue for most.

Bugs, system conflicts, and errant bits of code add unique challenges to the technical area of open source development. They also affect a project's community -- and as any community manager can tell you, developing a healthy community is often more difficult (and has higher stakes) than rogue code.

Management is tough all round, but managing open source projects is different still. Most developers are giving their time because the project interests them, and non-developers join because they find the project useful, and they want to share their enthusiasm. But a community not being any one remotely homogenous group means that passions sometimes run high, and it's not always easy to keep a project's community -- it's life -- moving forward.

It may have just gotten easier. Ubuntu's Community Manager, Jono Bacon, announced his upcoming book, The Art of Community will be available later this year.