The Open Media Project, a powerful and configurable system, dismantles the traditional vendor/ client paradigm. Instead of investing in a proprietary software package, stations and centers become part of the collaborative community of other organizations with shared interests and the ability to execute as a team and develop open source software. It can be a challenge for organizations not accustomed to the concept to accept open source as a viable approach for developing quality software.
Community is the key concept to understand how open source software is created. In this collaborative community, stations are able make contributions to shape the development of the Open Media Project in a variety of ways. The most direct way is through contribution of code that provides new and different functionality. Even stations with limited technical capacity are able to provide valuable perspective related to the specific work flow at their organization.
At its core, the Open Media Project leverages much of Drupal’s standard functionality. Drupal, an open source content management system, allows anyone to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Like any open source project, Drupal is free to download, share, and contribute back to. This open development model means that people are constantly working to make sure Drupal is a cutting-edge platform that supports the latest technologies that the Web has to offer. Hundreds of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power an endless variety of sites.
Specific workflow needs of stations and centers are met by extending Drupal's core functionality through community contributed and custom developed modules. Various modules work together to create the features of that define the Open Media project: Video Encoding, Management, & Sharing; Community-Driven Scheduling; Resource Management & Reporting; Community Interactivity; Video Sharing. Code development related to The Open Media Project is distributed across multiple organizations. With each update, we collectively get closer to the vision of a nation-wide network of user-driven public access stations and community technology centers.
Starting in 2012, stations that have not been able to adopt the Open Media Project tools due to a lack of technical expertise on staff or limited budget for Drupal contractors can still participate using the cloud based service being developed by Wherecorp & the Open Media Foundation.