As the strength and impact of open source software continue to grow, so does the community around it, and more crucially, so do the conversations around how to improve and sustain those communities. “FOSS Backstage” is a new conference that aims to look at these issues, focusing on the building, governance, and inner-workings of open source projects and their communities. It takes place in Berlin from June 13th to 14th and runs alongside The Apache EU Roadshow of the Apache Software Foundation in the same venue.

FOSS Backstage is aimed at both open source project managers and companies that use open source software for their products and services, whether in commercial or free products, open or closed source.

FOSS Backstage hopes to answer the questions that many open source project maintainers have, such as:

• How should they structure communities in a meaningful way?
• How do they promote open source contributions in their company?
• How to attract contributions to their projects.
• How to promote their project.
• What are the standard licenses and organization models to follow?
• What other legal issues affect open source software and using it?

Speakers from different fields and projects, such as the Linux Foundation, the Apache Software Foundation, the Document Foundation, Debian and Wikimedia, and attendees from companies with experience with FOSS structures will be in attendance to share their ideas and experiences on these topics and more.

The schedule is now online and is a good mix of discussions on the implementation side and the community side of projects, so something for everyone involved with open source. Danese Cooper, Head of Open Source Software at PayPal, will give a keynote speech discussing the early days of Open Source, something that has left its mark on companies and foundations around the globe.

I am attending, so if you have any questions you’d like me to ask the speakers, please let me know in the comments below. And if you are attending, well the 14th is my Birthday, so join me for a cold German beer while we discuss the intricacies of open source.