Towards a sustainable solution to open source sustainability Tobie Langel, Principal, UnlockOpen
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The Heartbleed Bug
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Heartbleed bug impact ! 4.5 MILLION The number of US patient records whose confidentiality was compromised. ” $500 MILLION Estimated cost to the industry.
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Pivotal moment where tech industry realizes open source is: # UBIQUITOUS 2/3 of active sites on the Internet rely on the OpenSSL library. ⚠ CRITICAL OpenSSL encrypts private communications, bank transactions, medical records, etc. % UNDERFUNDED Only 1 full-time maintainer, shoestring budget ($2k/year).
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& FOCUS Originally aimed at artists, musicians & writers. ’ GOAL Create a “meaningful revenue stream.” ( SUCCESS STORY Evan You (pictured), creator of Vue.js. Nets over $17K per month. ❌ REPRODUCIBLE? Not really. Very few devs have a large enough revenue stream to work on OSS full-time.
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- GITHUB ISSUE MARKET Allows project owners to add bounties to GitHub issues. Devs submit their work as a pull request. ” $500,000 Amount of bounties paid on the platform in 2018. ⛓ BLOCKCHAIN-BASED Developers received bounties in Ether. , WHOLE ECOSYSTEM GitCoin also provides an ad network (CodeFund), and a Patreon-like solution (Grants).
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- CONTEXTUAL ADS Advertise on the websites of open source projects. . HIRING FOCUS Dedicated solution for hiring developers. / $6K PER MONTH Redistributed to project maintainers out of $10K monthly revenue.
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0 WHAT DOES IT DO? Provides non profit status (501c6) to open source projects & transparency as to how funds are used. ( SUCCESS STORY WebPack reached $400K+ yearly funding in 2018. Win-win situation for key sponsor (trivago). 1 LONG TAIL PROBLEM A few projects are getting most of the funding (>25% of total funds for WebPack in 2017).
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2 WHAT IS IT? Red Hat business model for the long tail. 3 SERVICES Provides security updates, maintenance, and legal assurances for all open source projects in an organization’s stack. 4 HOW? By paying the actual maintainers to do the work. ( SUCCESS STORY None yet. It’s too early.
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$100
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$10,000 Monthly revenue of CodeFun.
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1 million dollars • • Amount collected by Open Collective in a year. Amount Tidelift committed to pay developers.
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Worldwide developer population : h t a m e p o l e v n e e of th Non-pro 4.30M Full-time Part-time 11.65M 6.35M k c a b k Quic B 0 8 7 $ = K 5 6 $ x s v e d T F 12M B 0 1 2 $ = K 5 3 $ x s v e d T P M 6 + s r a l l o d n o i l l i r ~= 1 t Source: IDC, Worldwide Developer Census, 2018.
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1 million dollars • • Amount collected by Open Collective in a year. Amount Tidelift committed to pay developers.
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100 million dollars 1 million dollars $10,000
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1 billion dollars
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10 billion dollars
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1 trillion dollars
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1 million dollars
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“[P]art of the reason much of open source is so good, and often so superior to closed-source commercial projects, is the natural boundary of constraints. If you are not being paid or otherwise compensated directly for your work, you’re less likely to needlessly embellish it. You’re solving the problems for you and your mates, likely in the simplest way you could, so you can get back to whatever you originally intended to do before starting to shave the yak.” —DHH, The Perils of mixing open source and money, Nov 12, 2013.
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Developers working on the Linux kernel Non employed 7.7% Employed 92.3% Source: Linux Kernel Development report 2016.
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Problem Co!ee Engineer Sarcasm (by-product) Solution
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Problem Co!ee Software Engineer Sarcasm (by-product) CODE
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Problem Co!ee Software Engineer Sarcasm (by-product) Commons OPEN SOURCE CODE Software Engineer Sarcasm (by-product) Problem Co!ee
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Problem Co!ee Software Engineer Sarcasm (by-product) Commons OPEN SOURCE CODE Conversations Code reviews Mentoring Networking Etc. Software Engineer Sarcasm (by-product) Problem Co!ee
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Problem Co!ee Commons Software Engineer OPEN SOURCE CODE Conversations Code reviews Mentoring Networking Etc. Sarcasm (by-product) Adopt best-prac tices Increase code qua lity BY-PRODUCTS Software Engineer Problem Co!ee Sarcasm (by-product) e l a r o m & e r u t l u c d e v o Impr s l l i k s t f o s e v o r p m I Lower technical debt Improve documentation y l d Reduced churn n e i r f e t o Rem Innovation Influence project directi I n crease e”cie l o o p on Access to talent r e ncies d a e l y r t s u d n i s a ed v i e c r e P Level-up engineers y t i p i d n e Access to expert n “Knowledge spillover” r Se Better career opportunities etwork
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BY-PRODUCTS PROJECT INDIVIDUAL TEAM ORGANIZATION Improve documentation Level-up engineers Increase e”ciencies Improved culture & morale Increase code quality Adopt best-practices Serendipity Perceived as industry leader Lower technical debt Improve soft-skills Innovation Access to talent pool Influence project direction Access to expert network Better career opportunities “Knowledge spillover” Remote friendly Reduced churn
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TWICE AS EFFICIENT Contributing firms capture up to 100% more productive value from usage of open source than their free-riding peers. 2× Source: Franck Nagle, Learning by Contributing, 2017.
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75% of Facebook’s new engineering recruits mention Facebook’s open source Program as a key reason they accepted their o!er
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The key to open source sustainability is to make organizations understand the ROI of contributing to open source: What’s in it for them.
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Tobie Langel Principal, UnlockOpen unlockopen.com tobie@unlockopen.com @tobie Thank you!
