Creating​ ​a​ ​growing​ ​open​ ​source​ ​project​ ​can​ ​be​ ​both​ ​rewarding​ ​and​ ​frustrating.​ ​It​ ​is​ ​rewarding​ ​to see​ ​the​ ​project​ ​grow​ ​and​ ​people​ ​contribute,​ ​but​ ​it​ ​can​ ​become​ ​frustrating​ ​and​ ​burdensome​ ​when your​ ​side-project​ ​comes​ ​to​ ​dominate​ ​your​ ​free​ ​time.​ ​If​ ​you're​ ​fortunate,​ ​you​ ​might​ ​be​ ​employed to​ ​work​ ​full-time​ ​on​ ​your​ ​open​ ​source​ ​project​ ​or​ ​even​ ​start​ ​a​ ​company​ ​around​ ​the​ ​project;​ ​then what?​ ​What​ ​is​ ​your​ ​new​ ​relationship​ ​"with​ ​the​ ​community?"​ ​How​ ​do​ ​you​ ​balance​ ​the​ ​motivations of​ ​various​ ​contributors,​ ​yourself​ ​included,​ ​within​ ​the​ ​project? In​ ​this​ ​talk​ ​we'll​ ​look​ ​at​ ​the​ ​history​ ​of​ ​the​ ​Jenkins​ ​project,​ ​from​ ​its​ ​origins​ ​as​ ​a​ ​side-project​ ​at​ ​Sun Microsystems​ ​to​ ​the​ ​growth​ ​of​ ​the​ ​project​ ​and​ ​on​ ​to​ ​the​ ​relationship​ ​with​ ​CloudBees,​ ​Inc.​ ​We'll look​ ​at​ ​what​ ​has​ ​and,​ ​perhaps​ ​more​ ​importantly,​ ​what​ ​hasn't​ ​worked​ ​well​ ​as​ ​CloudBees​ ​has grown​ ​in​ ​tandem​ ​with​ ​the​ ​Jenkins​ ​project.​ ​We​ ​will​ ​examine​ ​the​ ​evolving​ ​cultural​ ​dynamics​ ​of​ ​the project​ ​and​ ​the​ ​challenges​ ​of​ ​wearing​ ​two​ ​hats:​ ​corporate​ ​and​ ​open​ ​source.

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Hackers Gotta Eat
Building a Company Around an
Open Source Project
Kohsuke Kawaguchi
@kohsukekawa

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Hello World

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Kohsuke
• Hacker
• Created Hudson while working at Sun Microsystems
• Founded the Jenkins project
• Created InfraDNA after leaving Oracle
• Merged with CloudBees
• Now, CTO of CloudBees

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• Open source automation server
• 140k known "master" instances
• Running on 500k+ machines worldwide
• Helps over 1M people implement continuous integration
and continuous delivery
Jenkins

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CloudBees
• Deep DevOps and Jenkins expertise.
• Enterprise-grade platform.
• Expert-level support.
• Major contributor to the Jenkins project

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Open Source
Business Models

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Professional Services

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Professional Services
• Consulting on best practices
• Custom, per-company, development on top of the project

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Enterprise Products

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Enterprise Products
• Build once and sell multiple times
• Enterprise software does not sell itself
• OSS is good enough
• Need critical mass, story, & sales
• Recurring revenue vs one-time revenue

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Software as a Service

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Software as a Service
• We'll run a version of the open source project for a monthly fee
• Pros:
• Easy to understand product for most customers
• Economies of scale for running the project.
• Cons:
• Undervalued "I can run X on my workstation, it's not that hard."
• Can easily spiral into custom requirements per-customer

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Support

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Support
• Provide experts-as-a-service!
• Pros:
• Valued by larger organizations.
• Cons:
• You need a bigger organization, process, and system
• You have to hire the experts!

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Hiring from
the project

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Pros: Hiring from the project
• Straightforward to find motivated and qualified developers
• Open source developers already know how to work together (usually)
• Employing developers gives them more time to solve big problems
• Paying developers to work on their passion project can give them the adequate
support to make big break-throughs
• Often bring in sales leads :-)

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Cons: Hiring from the project
• Can cause ambiguity for developers
• "Am I on work-time or my-time?"
• "The company wants to do X, but I want Y."
• Can risk the company being seen as "co-opting" the project.
• When all the most vocal contributors are now employees…
• Can remove otherwise active participants from the project
• Especially if you hire people and put them on Enterprise products

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Interacting with
the project

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Interacting with the Project
• Define the boundaries within the company for interacting with the project
• Ensure the company is "on the same page" before spinning cycles in the
project
• Volunteer contributors don't have patience for inconsistencies from a company
• Accommodate community feedback in development time

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Development
and Collaboration

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Development and Collaboration
• Best to follow the Red Hat model and "work upstream" as much as possible
• Use "upstream" repositories
• Manage backlogs (when possible) in "upstream" issue trackers
• Follow "upstream" review and merging practices
• Determining transparency in product roadmap can be a challenge
• Teams might be working on upstream and "enterprise" functionality in the same
sprint

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Branding, Trademarks,
and Legalese

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Branding, Trademarks, and Legalese
• Being recognized as "the X people" is beneficial
• This is a big part of how people perceive value in what you offer
• Who owns the trademark?
• Extremely important to have clarity on where trademark ownership lies.
• Company must respect the mark's usage restrictions and guidelines.

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Branding, Trademarks, and Legalese
• Licenses 101
• Comply with existing licenses of software used/extended.
• Explain to employees copyright ownership of their work.
• Determine suitable licenses for new software created and open sourced.
• "Open Source" vs. "Free Software"
• Important to understand the differences.

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Why Bother

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Open Source is
"eating the world"

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Open source is "eating the world"
• For more and more organizations open source is a better choice
• More flexible
• Higher quality
• Lower barrier to adoption means a larger potential market for companies built
around open source projects

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We can solve better problems

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We can solve better problems
• Participation exposes the project to a broad set of perspectives
• Open source users and contributors will use software very differently than you
might expect.
• Open source means many "itches" and low-hanging fruit are resolved by
contributors.

30. Blue Ocean

31. Blue Ocean
●New user experience for Jenkins
●jenkins.io/projects/blueocean
●Built from the ground up for Continuous Delivery and modern developer needs

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Benefits to the Project

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Benefits to the Project
• More people, not just code contributors, can help move the project forward
• Designers
• Writers
• Many, many, more
• Corporate involvement lends credibility to "main street" businesses
• The company can become a lightning rod for bringing new corporate contributions

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Hackers Gotta Eat

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Hackers Gotta Eat
• Open source software is valuable.
• People's time is valuable.

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Questions?

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Thank you

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Boundaries
and Challenges

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Boundaries and Challenges
• Becoming an "Elephant in the Room."
• If the majority of active contributors are employees, it can discourage other
contributors and cause mistrust.
• Challenging to invest in deeper architectural changes.
• Hard to "sell" internal refactorings and updates.