why open source products are important by a google tech manager
TRANSCRIPT
Why Open Source Products Are Important by a Google Tech Manager
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Danny Rosen
Tonight’s Speaker
Product Management and Open Source
Or… A PM’s primer on leftist software development models
What is an open source software product?
● An open source software product is a software product wherein the source
code is publicly available
● Open source products contain licenses that dictate:
● Who owns the source code
● How the source code can be used or distributed
● We say product but maybe we mean project?● Why is it important?
● What’s the difference?
Are open source products a new thing?
● No!
● 1980s magazines
● Linux
● Chrome
● Android
● Pidgin
● Sort of…?
● Open Source Software is supporting
commercialization now more than
ever.
Who Uses Open Source?
YOU. RIGHT NOW.
YOU. TOMORROW.
Who Participates?
Community
Has Time
Customers
Grow their skills
Improve the product experience
Learn new approaches
Network
Inspire and Be Inspired
Have “a need”
Have varying ways of consuming
Want to support the product
Want documentation and support
Have Money
Benevolent Dictator For
Life
Rule with a loving, iron fist
Maintain control and vision
As a ___ I want to ___ So I can ___
Credit Nathan Fox
@nathanfoxy
● Grow awareness
● Increase resources
● Standardize
● Increase availability /
“surface area”
As a Corporation, I want to {{want}}So I can {{motivation}}
● Obtain dev community
● Ship product faster
● Define emerging trends
● Expand product offering
{{want}}
{{motivation}}
● Control the project
● Govern
● Provide support
● Attract other
corporations
As an organization, I want to {{want}}So I can {{motivation}}
● Facilitate vision process
● Grow with stability
● Attract new members
● Reduce single point of
failure
{{want}}
{{motivation}}
Where do projects reside?
Github
Gitlab
Gomix / Glitch
SourceForge
Bitbucket
LaunchPad
Package Managers:
NPM, PyPi, Maven, Aur, RHEL,
LaunchPad, Gem, Pear & Pecl, etc
Microsoft CodePlex
Google Code
How does a Product become Open Source?
… and once it is how do you keep it from falling over?
Before you publish, ask...
● Why choose to take commercial software to
open source?
● What OSS business model do you use?
● How do you address the weight of existing
code and cultural history?
● Why type of community do you want to create
● What open source license fits?
● What governance and development models
do you want to use?
Credit: Cyrus Wadia @ Pivotal
Business Models
● Pure open source
● “Buy-me-a-beerware” (Ex: Tooling, pet projects)
● Community open source
● Foundation (ex: Apache Foundation, Linux Foundation, Mozilla Foundation)
● “Pure Play” with a focus on services & support
● Race to the bottom. Danger: Commoditization!
● Subscription open source
● Hosted Software as a Service subscriptions (ex: Wordpress, Ghost, Sandstorm)
● Multi-license open source
● Open source core, closed source value add
Organizational ownership benefits
● Objective organization growing the project
● Dedicated legal, marketing, business, hand-shaking support
● IP assistance
● Dedicated growth support for the ecosystem
● Reduces “single vendor” risk
● Governance model comes built in
● Aligning multiple organizations around a single vision*
* hard
Governance
● The hierarchy and roles that the project participants assume
● The definition of participants’ roles in the project
● How communication exists within the project
- Chaos vs Process. Fun times, right?
Licensing
Copyleft vs Permissive
● Copyleft: Anything that you create or link to becomes open source
● Permissive: Anything that you do, you can close source
● Restrictions determine if additions or links require openness
● Captain Obvious Says…”Corporations are generally not fans of giving their IP
away for free, Jimmy.”
● Make it easy for others to contribute and consume
● Contributor License Agreements (CLAs)
● Empathy for customers and contributors
● Documentation
● Release milestones
● Roadmap policy
● Contribution policy
● Tests & CI
● Overcommunicate
● Excite your contributors
● Learn and teach, teach and learn.
Okay, so success. How?
Thanks!
Me:
Danny Rosen
github/twitter: @dannyzen
linkedin.com/in/dannyrosen
Sarah Novotny - KubernetesDavid Aronchick - KubernetesJohn Mark Walker @ ARMCyrus Wadia @ PivotalMarco Nicosio @ PivotalMike Dalessio @ PivotalBridget Kromhout @ MicrosoftStephen Walli @ Microsoft
Credit
Nathan Fox
@nathanfoxy
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