This was the talk I gave at GitHub's CodeConf in June 2015. Microsoft’s involvement with open source has received a lot of attention recently with announcements around .NET and C#. In this presentation, Kasey Uhlenhuth will walk you through Microsoft’s journey into open source and explain how .NET -- Microsoft’s popular developer platform -- is leading the open source effort at the company. She will also cover how development teams are adjusting to working in a new way and how the community has become an integral part of the .NET open ecosystem. Relevant links: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2015/04/06/a-journey-through-open-source-the-trials-amp-triumphs-in-roslyn-s-first-year-of-open-source.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2015/07/02/thank-you-for-your-contributions.aspx

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2. Traditionally, Microsoft has been like a rocket shooting for Jupiter…we set on a
straight path and are in space for years before we finally make landing.
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3. The modern Microsoft is now set to navigate the agile and changing world of open
source development, and we want to do it well.
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4. In order to truly do open source well, we need to manage three tensions of open
product development: Maintaining Product Direction, Reconciling Salaried and
Passionate contributors, and adapting to distributed teams
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5. In this talk, I'll introduce how we set out on this voyage and where we are today. Then
I'll talk about our approach to navigating the three tensions. And I'll conclude with a
look at how well our efforts have panned out so far and where we hope to do better.
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6. Microsoft’s open source journey began over 10 years ago when we open sourced WiX
on SourceForge in 2004.
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7. Since then we have been involved in open source in three main ways:
-contribute (.NET, TypeScript)
-integrate (docker, cordova)
-interop/tool and platform interoperability (github integration, web frameworks)
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8. Today, the .NET team is primarily leading the modern Microsoft’s voyage into open
source efforts
The .NET Foundation is similar to the Apache Foundation.
13/35 projects in .NET FDN are external
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9. Roslyn project background. We wanted to go fully open source from beginning but
made sense to go piece by piece as we were working.
Community helped make course corrections along the way
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10. Biggest step was moving from source open model to fully open source (adopting
community workflow)
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11. Taking a broader look at some of the .NET open source repos, we can compare the
new user growth over time to Joyent’s Node.js and the Mono Project
This volume of community growth, leads us to our 3 tensions of open product
development….
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12. 3 tensions arise from the volume of community interaction
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13. (1) How to do product development in the open without being randomized by
community interactions?
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14. First C#7 design notes inundated with community engagement! (awesome and high
quality, but how do we have time to address all comments?)
How to stay productive in the face of all this feedback???
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15. Channel the community interactions with roadmap (only works for PRs and feature
requests).
How to improve our language design model? Look at Rust, maybe?
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16. (2) Salaried Internal vs Passionate contributors
While both are passionate, their root motivations mayyyy be different.
People inside large companies are always moving around. People get promoted,
move teams, or leave the company.
Tension is as much about big companies learning how to work with OSS community
as about OSS community learning how to work with big companies.
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17. Example of super passionate community contributor who ported CoreCLR to Mac
OSX within 4 days of runtime being open source.
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18. (3) Distributed teams
How to keep energy high when core team operates in a different time zone than parts
of the community?
Visual F# team does online meetups—hard to get a time where everyone can get
involved. Do 9am but this shuts out some developers…
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19. Recap 3 tensions
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20. Efforts navigating tensions and fostering community have gone well so far.
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21. This is a compilation of advice from our team members who have been active
participants in open source and knew how we should interact.
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22. We are all a team. We are all the community. BE RESPONSIVE.
The more responsive you are, the more patience the community has with you.
Community told Roslyn we weren’t responsive enough early on, so we measured our
response rates under new model on GitHub.
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23. Have fun! Cup campaign for Roslyn code contributors.
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24. We are still learning. A couple weeks ago we made a graphic for the roslyn repo
because what open source project doesn’t have stickers?!
Generated a lot of push back and nervousness which made me realize the extent of
the changes that are happening. Microsoft is a HUGE company has teams fully
committed to open source.
This sticker example best illustrates my final point, which is that embracing open
product development is a culture and workflow change not just for engineers, but for
the entirety of Microsoft. Marketing, HR, management, the legal department, and
engineers alike all have to adapt to a new way of working and thinking. We are all still
learning and our journey is far from over!
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