(Balázs Scheidler, co-founder and CTO, BalaBit) As a long term member of the Open Source community, I believe that the Open Source development model creates a great context for innovation to happen. In the open source world, collaboration and sharing are key principles. These principles put the problem to be solved in focus and tear down organizational boundaries. An Open Source project is a space where the best engineers from multiple competing organizations work as a team on solving a common goal. This space and the direct connection to users boosts engineer motivation, creating trust and a virtuous circle that results in fast iterations: creating layers upon layers of work yielding a great product at a pace that is unrealistic in a proprietary software development setting. We can also see that the same values and principles start happening outside of the software realm: Wikipedia, Creative Commons and the Maker community confirms the approach works in other fields, which shows that it can be adapted to further situations to improve efficiency and innovation.

1. The value add of
OPEN SOURCE
for innovation
Balázs Scheidler
co-founder and CTO, BalaBit

2. Introduction
Started programming
at age 12 on
Commodore 64
First exposure to
Linux at 16-17:
Slackware 1.0, Linux
kernel 0.99pl14
Contributor to open
source projects at 19:
Free Pascal Compiler
and others
Starting my own
open source
project at 21:
syslog-ng
Starting my own
company with an
Open Source
business model at 23:
BalaBit
Balázs Scheidler, founder & CTO of BalaBit

3. What is Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS)?
The freedom to run
the program as you
wish, for any
purpose
The freedom to study how
the program works, and
change it so it does your
computing as you wish.
The freedom to
redistribute copies so
you can help your
neighbor.
The freedom to
distribute copies of your
modified versions to
others.
The four freedoms

4. Claim: Everyone is directly or indirectly using Open Source software.

5. Internet infrastructure:
Social:
Mobile:
Cloud:
IoT:
Big Data:
Others:
Proof
Amazon Kindle, TVs, embedded computing,
PoS terminals, …
standards, TCP/IP, DNS, ...

6. Why do companies spend money on engineers
and give away the results for free?

7. Because it yields the best product
&
enables much higher adoption

8. If and only if a proper community
is formed around it

9. Proper community
Initially most
projects come from
a single source
Forming a real
community is a
challenge that takes
energy, resources and
focus
Code drops do not
form a community!
Everything is
transparent,
everything is
in the open

10. Proper community II.
Users &
contributors: both
are important!
Contributors are from
multiple companies that
invest
More likely to be
formed around
“platforms” than
“applications”

11. Company motivation
ENGINEERS: THE KNOWLEDGE AND ABILITY TO:
 support it in deployments
 enhance it in new directions
 fix problems
THEY KEEP CONTROL AS LONG AS THEY HAVE MERIT (as in meritocracy)
Companies give the code and control away

12. IN EXCHANGE FOR CODE AND CONTROL,
COMPANIES GET THE BEST PRODUCT
AND THE BEST POSITION TO PRODUCTIZE IT

13. THEY ALSO GRANT THE RIGHT TO
ANY OTHER COMPANY TO DO THE SAME.
… with enough investment

14. The code becomes an independent entity of its original creator
The creation itself does not grant a monopoly over the product

15. Best Product, why?
MORE USERS,
MORE FEEDBACK →
BETTER PRODUCT
 More adaptable, more
environments
 Scratching an itch
HIGHER ADOPTION
 Nothing stops anyone from trying it (it's free
to use and study)
 Network effect (more users lead to even
more users)
 Making the pie larger in the long term

16. Best Product II.
ITERATIVE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
W/ COLLABORATION
 “Standing on the shoulders of giants”
 Instead of huge increments:
o smaller steps,
o one at a time,
o potentially by a different contributor,
o continuously refining the whole
COMPETITION
 Successful projects are backed by
multiple vendors, competing in the
marketplace
 Competing companies work on the
same code base

17. Best Product III.
ENGINEER ENGAGEMENT
 The intrinsic desire to create the best
 Probably the most important reason

18. Motivating Engineers

19. Engineer motivation
Source: janfredrik.wordpress.com
Learning, skill development
Peer recognition, status Curiosity,
„scratching an itch” Having fun
Idealism
Contribute to a bigger purpose
Lojalty
Career opportunities
Monetary rewards (salary/bonus)
„Share back” to community
Help others
Beat the „enemy” (i.e. Microsoft)
Socail commitment
Political support
Intrinsic
Extrinsic
Egoistic Altruistic

20. The power of a community
Open source communities
trigger much more on
intrinsic motivations than
commercial settings
 Voluntary participation
 Learning & curiosity
 Peer recognition, pride
 Having fun
Commercial settings
 Monetary rewards
 Getting things done

21. Hobby & job
Engineers take a job to pay their bills…
… but usually still have retain hobbies
Open Source can be one of those hobbies
Making one's hobby his job
has enormous benefits through motivation
 Inherent understanding of the problem space (less need for product management)
 Attention to detail, solving problems the best way possible
 Making decisions at an individual level, without management overhead
 Collaboration with like-minded peers becomes very easy

22. It is not just Software
Wikipedia Creative
Commons
(creative works
such as photos,
music)
Open Hardware
(Arduino)
Maker community
(3D printing, DIY)

23. Summary
Open Source
Transparency creates
an opportunity to join and trust
Motivations become intrinsic
Innovation happens :)

24. Thank You!
Questions?