class: center, middle
Rich Bowen, (Apache|AWS)
Slides: github.com/rbowen/presentations
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- Introduce yourself.
- Apache, 20+ years in FLOSS
- Open Source Strategist at AWS
- Open Source zealot trying to communicate to prosaic managers
- There are many motivations for writing open source software. Your company's motivations are entirely different.
Always had the luxury of working with people who are as passionate about open source as I am but now that I'm at a megacorp I find myself spending a lot more time talking to managers and using terms like "ROI".
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You like getting paid to work on open source
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So you want your company to have a positive experience with it
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And it's up to you to persuade management to do this correctly
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You should want your company to succeed
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Ideally, you are interested in the success of your company. Correct understanding of open source is a long-term investment in the success of your company, as well as in your own career.
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Meta-reason I want you to care:
As open source has become critical to businesses over the last decade, more companies treat it like a product to consume rather than a project to sustain or participate in.
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- Ask the question
- Fun
- Scratching your own itch
- Socialization
- "Giving back"
- Make the world a better place, and possibly be remembered for it
- Resume building, education
- Oh, and because it's your job
Source: OpenSource.com survey - http://tm3.org/fl
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Main reasons:
- Learn something new, or career opportunities
- Fun
- Altruism
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- The great thing about C/C, and events like it, is that we can sit around the campfire and speak a common language.
- We all have stories about corporate types who Just Don't Get It, and we can laugh at them together.
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- Probably in that order
- Clarification. Your company probably doesn't mean the same thing when
they talk about doing open source that you do - "doing" open source can mean
- Contributing to existing projects
- Open sourcing an internal project
- Adopting an open source solution
- Building products and services on top of open source
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- Obviously not YOUR manager!
- This is my manager
- I am sure you have a wonderful manager, and that they understand open source. Otherwise you wouldn't be at this event. But somewhere up the management chain is someone with different priorities.
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When you are talking to management about open source, you must speak their language.
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Note: This is translation, not lying. Open source is, above all, practical. It's an objectively better way to build software, and what's good for the customer is also the right thing to do. I am not telling you to lie to your management. Merely to understand where they are coming from, as you attempt to understand where you are coming from.
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It would be reductionist to say that your company only cares about profits. It's more complicated than that.
- The customer
- The product/service
- The company
- Cost/Profit
- Recruiting
- Reputation
- Legacy
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This is a great book, but ...
Don't talk philosophy, unless they ask. Certainly not in a first conversation.
- Licenses
- Jargon
- "Free" vs "Open"
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- You have a limited amount of time to make your point - or, at least, to persuade your audience that you are worth listening to. Spending that time on the nuances of Free/Libre/Open/Puppies will work against you, and persuade your manager that you are don't care about the same things she does.
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Giving back is a moral obligation
...but
Your company is not a charity
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Management often sees open source as a renewable resource that they can take and take and take, with no end in sight.
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Your attitude that open source contribution is a moral obligation, or "for the greater good" or any such thing, comes across as nonsense unless there is an actual business benefit.
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Dawn Foster: If you talk about what you do as though it's charity, then it's going to be the first thing cut when there are budget conversations.
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- WHY is giving back the right thing to do? Because you derived good from it, and so should nurture it in return.
- Not because of a moral obligation, but because of sustainability
- Your manager loves talking about the supply chain. They read an article about SBOMs last month, and have been looking for an opportunity to bring it up in conversation.
- When you use a natural resource, you need to ensure that it's still around next year.
- If your company is betting millions (billions?) of dollars on something that relies on an open source project, shouldn't they be concerned that the project is healthy and sustainable?
- Demonstrate, with numbers, how this project is a critical part of your supply chain. Data is your friend here.
- Talk about supply chain horror stories. There are so many from which to choose.
- This is long term thinking, not about solving immediate problems. That looks good to managers. It shows you care about the company, not just about your own personal needs.
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- log4shell
- The list goes on
- Caution: Be sure to communicate that in each case, these happened because of little community engagement, not because they were open source.
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Yes, the obligatory XKCD comic, which is useful in almost every open source conversation.
- Understand that your company is one of those things teetering on top.
- Shoring up that bottom layer is an investment, not charity
Apache Commons is a critical component in our product ZYX, which earned earned $27M last year. If the project were to fail, we would have to replace it with something else, which would take approximately six months of work by 4 engineers, assuming we could find a comparable project with which to replace it, rather than developing what we need from scratch. Therefore, it is in the best interests of our customers, and our bottom line, to participate in the sustainability of that project by contributing bug fixes, feature enhancements, and PR reviews.
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- This is an example report to your manager about why it's important that you contribute to the sustainability of a project.
- Be specific. Use numbers. Reference reports.
- Tie it to a company priority - in this case, profitability and budget
- Don't waste words on things they don't care about
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- Multiple vendors
- Multiple maintainers
- Responsive to user (customer) needs
- Stakeholders participate!
- At AWS, we call this "undifferentiated heavy lifting", but it means
- Focus on what you're good at, collaborate on what's common
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Elephant Factor definition
This is an entire other presentation
Short version: Single-vendor projects tend to be primarily about that vendor's priorities. (Sounds obvious when you say it ...)
- Multiple vendors protects you from one vendor changing priorities, and killing the project, or relicensing it to something that precludes your use.
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Pony factor definition
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Same as single-vendor, but so much moreso
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Having multiple maintainers protects you from skiing accidents
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My beautiful kids, both of whom were very popular in highschool
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Your company is not in it to be popular, but to be successful
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They certainly don't care if you are popular
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But popularity is a proxy for influence. Maybe.
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My other beautiful kid, who is far less concerned with being popular, or what folks think. Rather, they're interested in setting the narrative, and being the one to steer the conversation.
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Talk about driving the project's direction on behalf of our customers
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This can be dangerous, though, if your company doesn't understand open social norms. Be sure to ask someone here at this conference if you yourself are unsure how to interact with an open source project.
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Don't claim you own/lead/invented an open source project.
XYZCo. is a driving force behind Apache Thingy™.
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Also, there's no guarantee that your contributions/recommendations will be accepted, so be careful about promising too much
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Surveys show (reference needed) that customers view open source participation as an indication of trust, expertise, and ability to provide good customer service.
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The tide lifts all boats
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We contribute to Kafka in order to make it better for the customer, and drive adoption of the technology. Then, we're available to help with the deployment, if customers need that.
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Influence in the larger tech space
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eg Kubernetes/CNCF projects where one project drives the use of another, and earns trust in the ecosystem as a whole
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DroidCon Kenya, 2022!
Open source is an endless party, and can be a source of lifelong friends. Right?
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- Your company is not interested in you having fun, despite what they said in your interview.
- Talking about your open source work makes your employer an attractive place to work
- Warning: If you hire someone with the (implied?) promise that they'll get to work on open source, breaking that promise will immediately be public information, and damage your reputation
- Also, open source people (whatever that means) can be very opinionated, lean libertarian/anarchic, and can be difficult to manage.
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- Your employer is very not interested in you building your resume
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Expertise in software your company relies on
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General programming skills
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A lot of open source is about people skills, rather than technical skills
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Even better, it's free (Disclaimer: Nothing is free)
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People skills - and you can practice on strangers!
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And, speaking of free ... (next slide)
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Free as in puppies!
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Software is easy, people are hard.
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Customers come to you because they trust you.
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This is doubly true if your product is based on open source
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Your people are your product. Everything else is just a delivery mechanism
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Customers tend to select technology first, and the company second
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Participation in open source establishes expertise
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Open source is also a way to comodotize your competitor's product, and make the conversation about expertise, not software
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If you sell software, open source is a way for the customer to directly influence the feature set, and helps them trust your solution
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Can't we just ...
- ... fork it?
- ... write our own?
- ... throw money at it?
- ... hire the maintainer?
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Won't this help our competition?
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What about our secrets?
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As you discuss open source with your manager, they will have lots of objections, and lots of brilliant new ideas that nobody has thought of before. It's important, as in any conversation, to be patient, polite, and kind.
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Remember that things that you think everyone knows may be completely foreign to people outside of our little bubble.
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Each of these is another whole presentation
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Earn trust gradually with your employer. These are complicated conversations
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- Open source investments take a while to pay off
- Investments in open source take 3 years to pay off
- It takes a while to become a committer/maintainer
- It take a long time to master the code base
- It takes a long time to change company culture
- Most companies are not good at patience
- Especially if they have to produce a quarterly earnings report
class: center,middle
@rbowen
@AWSOpen
Slides: github.com/rbowen/presentations