Presented at: All Things Open 2019 Presented by: Dani Gellis, Indeed

1. Your Company Cares About
Open Source Sustainability.
But Are You Measuring and Encouraging
Upstream Contributions?
All Things Open
@IndeedEng | opensource.indeed.com

2. Hi, I’m Dani.
Dani Gellis, Software Engineer
Indeed’s Open Source Program Office
@danisyellis | dgellis@indeed.com

3. Overview
● Overview of Indeed’s Open Source Program
● Why Should Your Company Care About
Contributing Back To Open Source
● What We Decided To Measure And Why
● Tools We Looked At, Implemented, And Built
● Some Other Thoughts About Metrics
● What We’ve Learned So Far

5. ?????
Your Company’s Open Source “Legacy Code”
Imhotep
Launched: 2014
1 known external user
Proctor
Launched: 2013
2018: 1 Contributor
Total: 11 Contributors
Boxcar
Launched: 2010
Deprecated: 2013

6. Mistakes to Avoid when
Open Sourcing Proprietary Tech
https://events.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11
/Mistakes-to-Avoid-when-Open-Sourcing-Proprietary-Tech-Ja
ck-Humphrey-Indeed.pdf
(or search for Open Source Summit North America 2018 Jack
Humphrey)

7. Mistakes To
Avoid
When
Open Sourcing
1. Coding in
secret
2. Internal
Forks
3. No
publicity
4. No one
cares
5. Not
maintainin
g your
project

8. established:
November 2017

9. TO BUILD A CULTURE OF
WIDESPREAD, ACTIVE AND
RECURRING OPEN SOURCE
PARTICIPATION

10. Supporting The
Open Source
Projects Your
Company
Depends On
“A Partnership
Between Creator
And User”
-Daniel Compton

11. Why Should Your
Company Care
About Open Source Sustainability?

12. Why Should Your Company Help Sustain the
OSS It Depends On?
● Avoid Vulnerabilities
● Avoid Maintainer Burnout
○ Abandoned Projects
can mean no updates, or even malware
● Talent Attraction and Retention
● Customer Goodwill

13. Why Should Your Company Help Sustain the
OSS It Depends On?
● Innersource Concepts
● Saving Money on Licenses
○ Chance to get involved in the Community
and help Add what you need
● Increased Speed and Agility In Your
Development Cycle

14. NO FORKS!

15. If your company is highly dependent
on a piece of Open Source Software,
and no one from your company is
involved in that Open Source project,
you’re incurring business risk

16. Why Should Your Company Help Sustain the
OSS It Depends On?
● Moral Responsibility

17. Wow, those are great
reasons! OK, We’re In.
Now...

18. What Can We Do?
How can We Contribute?

19. Let’s Get Specific

20. Events/Initiatives
You Can Run To Help Bolster
Contributions By Employees
● First-time Contributor Events
● Open Source Study Halls
● Bringing Employees to Open Source Conferences
● Hacktoberfest
● 24-Pull Requests

22. Fostering a Culture
Of Contribution
Throughout the Company Will Help
● Signs in the Office
● Blog Posts and Wiki Pages with Advice
● Slack Channel
● Ambassadors at Other Offices
● Open Source Fellows Program (Comcast)
● Manager Buy-In for Employee Reviews

23. IF YOU CAN’T MEASURE IT, YOU CAN’T
IMPROVE IT - PETER DRUCKER

24. YOU GET WHAT YOU MEASURE

25. WHAT COUNTS AS A
CONTRIBUTION?

28. Contributions can be More
than just Code

32. Tools We Looked At,
Implemented, And Built

35. Credit: XKCD by Randall Munroe

36. The TODO Group is a group of companies who want to
collaborate on practices, tools, and other ways to run
successful and effective open source projects and programs.
https://todogroup.org

40. For now, how can we get the
metrics we need?
Google?

42. Dashboards

45. DASHBOARD SOLUTIONS
You Could Try:
● Grafana
● Tableau
● Redash

49. Image:: https://www.needpix.com/photo/1391620/baseball-vintage-scoreboard-1938-worldseries-broklyndodgers-newyorkyankees-score-game

50. Source: The metrics I gathered
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
Up and to the right!
Hmmmm, I guess this initiative worked!

51. What’s Next?

52. Learn more about the fund from these blog posts:
https://engineering.indeedblog.com/blog/2019/07/foss-fund-six-months-in/
https://blog.opencollective.com/indeeds-open-source-sustainability-strategy/

54. A Few Other Thoughts
About Metrics

55. The TODO Group is a group of companies who want to
collaborate on practices, tools, and other ways to run
successful and effective open source projects and programs.
https://todogroup.org

56. CHAOSS is a Linux Foundation project focused on creating analytics and metrics to help
define community health.
https://chaoss.community/

58. Image credit: https://www.maxpixel.net/Ipad-Pos-Cash-Machines-Restaurant-Waiter-Ipad-2713082

59. Image credit: https://www.maxpixel.net/Soda-Cold-Liquid-Glass-Refreshment-Beverage-Drink-2187294
Free Soda
when you Buy a
Burger and Fries!

60. Results to Date
Participants in Hacktoberfest
And 24-Pull Requests
Q4 2018
Virtual Community Building
#OSS
members
#OSS-help
members
Unique Views
Wiki Pages | Internal Blog

61. Results to Date
Internal Events
Attendees
Net Promoter Score
Fireside chats
In-Person Attendees
Virtual Attendees
Attendees

62. Image credit:
https://www.maxpixel.net/Grass-Yellow-Stop-Hazard-Do-Tape-Outdoor-Caution-3402597
Image credit:
https://www.maxpixel.net/Violators-Private-Property-Sign-No-Trespassing-2734551

63. Image credit: https://www.maxpixel.net/Mathematics-Pay-Digits-Close-Numbers-School-Count-2662758

64. What Have We
Learned So Far?

65. HIGHLY ACTIVE USERS: OUTLIERS
How Active? 10x? No! 100x!
Competition Discourages New Contributors
Don’t Build For Edge Cases
It’s Evened Out Over Time

66. Baseline Quarter

67. It’s Working!

69. This talk is dedicated to Dan Garcia
Co-creator and co-maintainer of FastLED

70. Thank You!
Let me know if you’d like to talk more about
- The FOSS Contributor Fund
- How you can measure upstream contributions
- Other ways we can work together to
support open source sustainability
- opensource@indeed.com
Dani Gellis | @danisyellis | dgellis@indeed.com