This document discusses open source product management. It begins by defining open source software as software where the source code is publicly available under an open source license. It then discusses who uses open source including individuals, communities, customers, and corporations. It outlines different business models for open source including pure open source, community open source, subscription models, and multi-license models. Finally, it discusses how to successfully manage an open source project through governance, licensing, usability, communication, and community building.

1. Open Source Product Management with
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5. Danny Rosen
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6. Hi there.

7. Product Management and
Open Source
Or… A PM’s primer on leftist software development models

8. Getting Started :
Open Source Software

9. What is an open source software product?
An open source software product is a software product wherein the source
code is publicly available
Open source products contain licenses that dictate:
● Who owns the source code
● How the source code can be used or distributed
We say product but maybe we mean project?
● Why is it important?
● What’s the difference?

10. Are open source products a new thing?
☂ No!
● Unix
● 1980s magazines
● Linux kernel
● RedHat: Fedora
● Pidgin
☂ Yes
● Open Source Software is supporting commercialization
now more than ever.

11. Who Uses Open Source?

12. YOU. RIGHT NOW.

13. YOU. TOMORROW.

14. Who Participates?

15. Benevolent Dictator For Life
(Project Owner)
Rule with a loving, iron fist
Maintain control and
vision
As a ___
I want to ___
So I can ___
Credit Nathan Fox
@nathanfoxy

16. Community
Has Time
Customers
Grow their skills
Improve the product experience
Learn new approaches
Inspire and Be Inspired
Have a need
Want to support the product
Want documentation and support
Have varying ways of consuming
Have Money

17. ☂ Grow awareness
☂ Increase resources
☂ Standardize
☂ Increase availability /
“surface area”
As a Corporation, I want to {{want}}
So I can {{motivation}}
● Obtain users
● Ship product faster
● Define emerging trends
● Expand availability

18. ☂ Control the project
☂ Govern
☂ Provide support
☂ Attract other
corporations
As an Organization, I want to {{want}}
So I can {{motivation}}
● Provide objectivity
● Grow with stability
● Attract new members
● Reduce single point of
failure

19. Where is Open Source?

20. 100%
Of open source projects are on Github

21. Where do projects reside?
Github
Gitlab
Gomix / Glitch
SourceForge
Bitbucket
LaunchPad
Package Managers:
NPM, PyPi, Maven, Aur, RHEL, LaunchPad,
Gem, Pear & Pecl, etc
Microsoft CodePlex
Google Code

22. How does a Product become
Open Source?
… and once it is how do you keep it from falling over?

23. Before you publish, ask...
Why choose to take commercial software to open
source?
What OSS business model do you use?
How do you address the weight of existing code
and cultural history?
Why type of community do you want to create
What open source license fits?
What governance and development models do you
want to use?
Credit: Cyrus Wadia @ Pivotal

24. Business Models
Pure open source
● “Buy-me-a-beerware” (Ex: Tooling, pet projects)
Community open source
● Foundation (ex: Apache Foundation, Linux Foundation, Mozilla Foundation)
“Pure Play” with a focus on services & support
● Race to the bottom. Danger: Commoditization!
Subscription open source
● Hosted Software as a Service subscriptions (ex: Wordpress, Ghost, Sandstorm)
Multi-license open source
● Open source core, closed source value add

25. Organizational ownership benefits
Objective organization growing the project
Dedicated legal, marketing, business, hand-shaking support
IP assistance and less worries
Dedicated growth support for the ecosystem
Reduces “single vendor” risk
Governance model comes built in
Aligning multiple organizations around a single vision*
* hard

26. Governance
The hierarchy and roles that the project participants assume
The definition of participants’ roles in the project
How communication exists within the project
- Chaos vs Process. Fun times, right?

27. Licensing
Copyleft vs Permissive
Copyleft: Anything that you create or link to becomes open source
Permissive: Anything that you do, you can close source
Restrictions determine if additions or links require openness
Captain Obvious Says…”Corporations are generally not fans of giving their IP
away for free, Jimmy.”

28. OMG Flow Charts

29. Make it easy for others to contribute and consume
● Contributor License Agreements (CLAs)
● Empathy for customers and contributors
● Documentation
● Release milestones
● Roadmap policy
● Contribution policy
● Tests & CI
● Overcommunicate
● Excite your contributors
● Learn and teach, teach and learn.
Okay so success. How?

30. Interesting Stuff
Because research.
… time permitting, yap yap yap yap...

31. No such thing as an OSS company
☂ Engineering Economics
☂ OSS is a method within the space of “Software
Development”
Credit: Stephen Walli

32. Bubble? Growth? Both?
2016: Linux Foundation
attracted over 20,000
attendees from more than
4,000 organizations across
85 countries.
2015: Linux Foundation
attracted over 15,000
attendees from more than
3,100 organizations across
85 countries.

33. Thanks!
Me:
Danny Rosen
github/twitter: @dannyzen
linkedin.com/in/dannyrosen
danny.rosen@gmail.com
Sarah Novotny - Kubernetes
David Aronchick - Kubernetes
John Mark Walker @ Dell EMC
Cyrus Wadia @ Pivotal
Marco Nicosio @ Pivotal
Mike Dalessio @ Pivotal
Bridget Kromhout @ Pivotal
Stephen Walli @ Docker
Jason Dover @ KEMP