The Extra Mile

The illusive interface between business and the open source community is difficult to define or even describe to the uninitiated. No one who was writing the management textbooks back when I was in college would believe the mysterious melding of community and commerce that is an everyday part of the FOSS ecosystem today. Conventional wisdom would claim the community isn't really a community or that a business helping to build this community could only be acting as some kind of PR-inspired charity. The whole idea that investing in community is a healthy and enlightened way to pursue vital business interests is lost on many in the business world even now, which is why it is important to celebrate when real businesses do real good things for the open source community.

Tag1 is a consulting company that does a lot of web development. Much of their work is with the Drupal open source content management system. Drupal has an active and vibrant user community around the world that gets together online and in person – at the popular DrupalCon conference series. But the developers, designers, and webmasters at Tag1 realized the Drupal community was missing something important: a magazine. Although they had no previous experience in publishing, Tag1 launched Drupal Watchdog, a print magazine for the whole Drupal community. Drupal Watchdog covered the whole spectrum of the Drupal experience, from design, to development, to daily tasks, to the management and marketing that surrounds the web content industry – and the emphasis was on the whole community. Drupal Watchdog had authors, and even advertisers, who worked for other consulting companies, but the Tag1 team wanted to reach everyone. Drupal Watchdog quickly became a favorite at the DrupalCon Conference, and readers subscribed and signed up for back issues through the Drupal Watchdog website.

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