Towards a sustainable solution to open source sustainability

A presentation at FOSDEM in February 2019 in Brussels, Belgium by Tobie Langel

Slide 1

Slide 1

Towards a sustainable solution to open source sustainability Tobie Langel, Principal, UnlockOpen

Slide 2

Slide 2

The Heartbleed Bug

Slide 3

Slide 3

Heartbleed bug impact ! 4.5 MILLION The number of US patient records whose confidentiality was compromised. ” $500 MILLION Estimated cost to the industry.

Slide 4

Slide 4

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).

Slide 5

Slide 5

Slide 6

Slide 6

Slide 7

Slide 7

& 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.

Slide 8

Slide 8

Slide 9

Slide 9

  • 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).

Slide 10

Slide 10

  • 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.

Slide 11

Slide 11

Slide 12

Slide 12

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).

Slide 13

Slide 13

Slide 14

Slide 14

Slide 15

Slide 15

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.

Slide 16

Slide 16

Slide 17

Slide 17

$100

Slide 18

Slide 18

$10,000 Monthly revenue of CodeFun.

Slide 19

Slide 19

1 million dollars • • Amount collected by Open Collective in a year. Amount Tidelift committed to pay developers.

Slide 20

Slide 20

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.

Slide 21

Slide 21

1 million dollars • • Amount collected by Open Collective in a year. Amount Tidelift committed to pay developers.

Slide 22

Slide 22

100 million dollars 1 million dollars $10,000

Slide 23

Slide 23

1 billion dollars

Slide 24

Slide 24

10 billion dollars

Slide 25

Slide 25

1 trillion dollars

Slide 26

Slide 26

1 million dollars

Slide 27

Slide 27

“[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.

Slide 28

Slide 28

Developers working on the Linux kernel Non employed 7.7% Employed 92.3% Source: Linux Kernel Development report 2016.

Slide 29

Slide 29

Slide 30

Slide 30

Problem Co!ee Engineer Sarcasm (by-product) Solution

Slide 31

Slide 31

Problem Co!ee Software Engineer Sarcasm (by-product) CODE

Slide 32

Slide 32

Problem Co!ee Software Engineer Sarcasm (by-product) Commons OPEN SOURCE CODE Software Engineer Sarcasm (by-product) Problem Co!ee

Slide 33

Slide 33

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

Slide 34

Slide 34

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

Slide 35

Slide 35

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

Slide 36

Slide 36

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.

Slide 37

Slide 37

75% of Facebook’s new engineering recruits mention Facebook’s open source Program as a key reason they accepted their o!er

Slide 38

Slide 38

The key to open source sustainability is to make organizations understand the ROI of contributing to open source: What’s in it for them.

Slide 39

Slide 39

Tobie Langel Principal, UnlockOpen unlockopen.com tobie@unlockopen.com @tobie Thank you!