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Description
Don’t miss out! Join us at our upcoming event: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2021 Virtual from May 4–7, 2021. Learn more at https://kubecon.io. The conference features presentations from developers and end users of Kubernetes, Prometheus, Envoy, and all of the other CNCF-hosted projects.
Making the Business Case for Contributing to Open Source - Tobie Langel, UnlockOpen
Today, pretty much all companies have embraced open source. But while they’re all keen to use open source, at lot fewer actually contribute to it. And yet, there’s real value in doing so. Companies use their contribution to open source to boost recruiting (Facebook claims 75% of their new engineering recruits mention Facebook’s open source program as a key reason they accepted their offer), increase their market, build a moat around their business, or position themselves as leaders in their field. In this talk, we’ll look at the different ways contributing to open source can benefit a business and become a competitive advantage. We’ll look at the open source strategies of different companies, big and small, and provide you with the knowledge to start building a business case for open source in your own company.
https://sched.co/ekBM
A
A
A
Kumbaya
answers
for
lack
of
a
better
word,
essentially
we're
talking
about.
Well,
you
should
contribute
back
because
it's
for
the
common
good
or
it's
paying
it
forward,
or
it's
the
right
thing
to
do,
etc,
etc.
Right.
So
none
of
these
reasons
are
really
addressing
genuine
business,
driven
reasons
for
a
company
to
contribute
to
open
source
and
the
problem
was
addressing
open
source
contributing
to
open
source.
A
Then
this
makes
it
really
difficult
to
concretely
solidly
make
the
business
case
for
open
source
inside
of
your
company,
and
so
the
purpose
of
this
presentation
today
is
essentially
to
move
a
place
where,
as
an
industry,
we
understand
the
return
on
investment.
At
the
roi
of
using
open
source
really
well,
the
you
know.
The
proof
of
that
is
that
everyone
is
actually
using
open
source
and
doing
well
realizing.
A
The
other
aspect,
obviously,
is
that
the
risk
of
contributing
to
open
source
are
not
really
well
understood.
Like
the
the
shark.
Here
we
are
concerned
we're
scared
of
sharks
when
in
fact,
they're,
essentially
not
really
dangerous
animals,
and
they
they
don't
kill.
They
kill
way
less
people
than
than
bees
or
or
even
dogs
do
on
a
yearly
basis,
and
so
our
fear
of
contributing
to
open
source
is
based
on
un,
not
well
understood
risk
and
exaggerated
risk.
A
A
A
It
is
fairly
common
for
that
technology
to
end
up
in
production
and
thus
was
sort
of
like
enterprise
level
service
agreements.
After
that,
and
so
unsurprisingly,
cloud
providers
and
related
sort
of
infrastructure
providers
are
focusing
on
open
source
significantly
to
bring
developers
to
their
offerings.
That's
explains,
for
example,
why
microsoft
bought
github
for
7.5
billion
a
couple
of
years
ago
in
order
to
really
drive
usage
of
its
azure
platform.
A
A
key
one
obviously
is
paying
technical
debt.
I
think
we've
all
been.
There
used
a
an
open
source
project,
forked
it
to
fix
a
bunch
of
things
that
were
specific
to
our
needs
and
then
had
to
handle
sort
of
patching
it
pulling
new
versions
and
ended
up
with
a
lot
of
work
in
that
space
and
sometimes,
as
a
result,
not
patching
for
security
issues
fast
enough,
etc.
A
Another
really
interesting
benefit
of
contributing
to
open
source
is
to
leverage
the
external
contributions.
A
great
example
is
react.
When
facebook
released
react,
they
also
wrote
a
bunch
of
white
papers
for
sort
of
like
other
pieces
of
the
ecosystem.
That
would
be
are
useful
to
react,
applications
and,
lo
and
behold,
the
community
actually
wrote
things
like
react:
router
and
redox
based
on
those
white
papers
and
really
quickly.
The
teams
at
facebook
that
were
relying
on
that
were
using
react
and
had
built
internal
equivalents
to
react.
A
Router
and
redux
realized
how
better
these
external
tools
were
and
used
them
instead,
and
the
other
interesting
benefit
here
is
that
they
were
also
able
to
hire
from
the
contributors
to
these
projects.
So
the
last
category
of
benefits,
of
contributing
to
open
source
I'd
like
to
look
at
are
second
order
benefits
and
to
better
understand
what
those
are.
Let's
start
with
this
diagram,
this
diagram
describes
the
process
of
engineering,
and
it
shows
an
engineer
that
takes
as
input
a
problem
in
coffee
and
that
spits
out
as
output
a
solution
and
as
byproduct
sarcasm.
A
It
could
be
in
code
reviews,
it
could
be
through
mentoring.
It
could
be
through
networking
events
in
in
real
life
or
online
etc.
Now
remember,
the
sarcasm
is
a
byproduct
that
I
was
mentioning
earlier.
That's
there
more
as
a
joke
turns
out
that
byproducts
are
really
interesting
and
obviously
all
of
this
conversation
code,
reviews,
mentoring,
etc.
Going
on
also
creates
byproducts,
and
when
you
think
about
those,
they
are
the
key
to
the
second
order
benefits
of
open
source.
A
A
Companies
that
contribute
to
open
source
tend
to
see
as
a
result
improve
culture
and
moral
being
perceived
as
leaders,
access
to
a
talent
pool
that
they
would
not
have
access
to
otherwise
being
remote
friendly,
which
again
in
2020,
is
a
really
nice
byproduct
and
reducing
things
like
churn
all
right.
So
by
looking
at
all
of
these
new
benefits
of
open
source,
we're
now
sort
of
tilting
the
scales
back
in
favor
of
contributing,
but
are
doing.
A
This
was
solid
arguments,
so
the
other
thing
that
we
have
to
do
now
to
really
continue
completely
tilting
the
scales
in
in
in
in
showing
the
benefits
of
open
source
is
to
actually
assess
the
the
negative
aspects
that
people
mention
when
we
talk
about
contributing
to
open
source
and
wonder
whether
they
are
actually
really
that
concerning
so
one
of
the
key
things
that
shows
up
all
the
time
is
contributing
to
open
source
means
losing
your
competitive
advantage.
So
two
things
here.
A
First
of
all,
obviously
no
one
is
suggesting
that
you
should
contribute
the
code
that
is
absolutely
critical
to
your
business
and
that
you
see
as
a
huge
competitive
advantage.
Frankly,
if
you
look
at
all
of
the
software
stack
in
an
organization,
that's
usually
a
really
small
chunk.
It's
not
the
whole
thing,
so
start
by
contributing
code
that
isn't
key
to
running
your
business
and
and
go
from
there.
A
What
matters
is
shipping
innovative
products
so
build
the
teams
that
help
you
do
that
and
one
of
the
best
way
to
build
teams
to
help
you
do.
That
is
to
have
a
really
strong,
open
source
culture
within
your
company
all
right.
So
there
are
a
bunch
of
other
risks
of
other
issues,
like
increased
risk,
wasted
resources,
lack
of
know-how,
etc.
That
are
also
interesting
to
tackle.
We
don't
really
have
the
time
today,
but
I
just
want
to
mention
that
most
of
those
are
either
exaggerated
again
or
can
be
handled
like
lack
of
know-how.
A
A
But
of
course,
what
you
have
to
remember
is
like
that's
going
to
be
different
for
every
company,
and
so
what
I
wanted
to
do
here
today
is
give
you
the
tools
to
be
able
to
do
this
and
to
be
able
to
do
this
for
your
specific
context
in
your
specific
organization
right.
So
the
key
here
is
this
is
a
framework
to
think
in
terms
of
business
trade-offs
right,
what's
a
benefit,
what's
a
risk
and
understanding
that,
in
some
cases,
risks
can
overweigh
benefits,
but
in
general
that
is
not
the
case.
A
A
So
when
you
do
that
a
few
suggestions,
first
of
all,
be
reasonable.
If,
if
your
company
just
invested
heavily
in
a
patent
portfolio,
it's
going
to
be
really
difficult
to
make
the
case
for
giving
all
of
that
away.
Right
second
thing
is:
show
empathy
to
others
needs
in
the
organization
understand
why
legal
is
pushing
back
understand
what
it
is
that
they
need.
Listen
to
them.
A
It's
very
often
the
case
that
there
are
communication
issues
that
prevent
different
organizations
within
a
company
of
finding
common
grounds
and
being
able
to
move
forward,
so
listen
to
others.
Aim
for
small
wins,
start
small
start
with
a
hackathon
or
contributing
back
to
a
project
that
is
not
critical
or
releasing
a
small
piece
of
software
or
organizing
an
event
or
giving
money
sponsoring
some
of
them.
A
The
the
dependencies
that
are
critical
to
your
business
and
that
our
open,
collective
or
something
like
that
right
start
small
and
the
key
is
to
remember
that
this
is
a
mindset,
shift
right,
move
from
the
notion
that
open
source
is
good
and
that
you
should
contribute
to
it,
because
that's
the
right
thing
to
do
right
to
the
notion
of
seeing
how
open
source
contribution
is
aligned
with
your
business,
the
business
goals
of
your
organization
and
can
help
drive
them.
You
will
find
that
conversations
once
you
adopt
this
mindshi.