This talk discusses the skills needed to be an open source entrepreneur, why it's important, and how it applies to modern product development. Will post accompanying video as soon as it's available. See https://osenetwork.com/ for more.

1. Open Source
Entrepreneurship
and Business
Transformation
John Mark Walker
Founder, Open Source Entrepreneur Network - osenetwork.com
Automation
Community
Collaboration
Governance

2. “There is no open source
business model”
– Stephen Walli

3. What is an Open Source Entrepreneur?
Automation
Community
Collaboration
Governance
Methodologies that
enable automation,
eg. CI/CD, M&O
tools, and business
process
Silo-busting, enabling
inter-team
communication,
thawing the “frozen
middle”, adopting
community best
practices internally
Where internal meets
external, optimizing
engineering process
for external
participation
Enabling business
affairs and legal to be
innovation partners,
not stifling. Licensing
and compliance.

4. Inter-disciplinary skill set
● Master of automation, embracing DevOps methodologies
● Collaborate following innersource best practices, breaking down silo-ed
compartmentalization
● Optimize bi-directional pathways between internal and external communities,
reducing technical debt
● Integrate license compliance and supply chain management into product
development
● Product owners must be knowledgeable of the above
What is an Open Source Entrepreneur?

5. >DevOps is not enough<

6. Lock-in risk ->
Infrastructurerisk->
Profitability
line
Open Source Product Risk Graph

7. Supply Chain Funnel
Cutting edge
components
Finished
Product
Integration + PM Process

8. Interested in software supply chain efficiency and risk mitigation?
● See https://openchainproject.org/
Open Source Software Supply Chain Funnel
Individual
Components
Open
Source
Distribution
Community “Product”
for End Users
Finished
Product

9. 2nd
Stage: “Middle” Distribution
Open
Source
Distribution
Community “Product”
for End Users
• Artifact of BC (Before CI) era
• Required stopping point from leading edge to
polished
• Great way to see if product design would hold
together
• In the old days, components were individually
packaged and maintained
• Source code repos were not easily distributed
• Don’t need 2nd
stage if continuously improving and
integrating along path to multiple releases
• In a linear development path, 2nd
stage obsolete

10. What Purpose Does the 2nd
Stage Serve?
• The community
distribution filled other
purposes, perhaps
unwittingly
• More relevant once you
take a non-linear view
• It’s all about the
ecosystem
• 1 code base serves many
masters
Open Source
Platform
Product
Community
Community Product
Community
Product
Product Community

11. It Was Never About Innovation
There is an art …or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the
ground and miss.
The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight,
and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt.
…Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to
miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by
something else when you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about
the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.
- Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

12. Innovation and Open Source
• Innovation was never the intent, but an interesting side benefit
• The intent was to create a fair system for creating and using software
• Innovation happened because of the rules governing open source systems
Old proprietary model
Vendor
Customer
Open source model
Vendor Customer

13. Cloud Native Supply Chain Funnel
Open Source
Components
Release
Continuous
Improvement
Agile
Processes
Release Release
v1 v2 v3
…vN+1

14. Cloud Native Supply Chain Funnel
Open Source
Components
Release
Continuous
Improvement
Agile
Processes
Release Release
v1 v2 v3
…vN+1
● Assumes single product destination
● How can you try “crazy stuff” without
messing up release process?
● How do external communities contribute?

15. Orthogonal Innovation
Individual
Components
Open
Source
Distribution
Finished
Product
Communities in the Ecosystem
Products in the Ecosystem

16. Orthogonal Innovation: Real World Examples
Individual
Components
Debian Ubuntu
Communities in the Ecosystem
Products in the Ecosystem

17. Orthogonal Innovation: Real World Examples
Individual
Components
Moby Docker
Communities in the Ecosystem
Products in the Ecosystem

18. Orthogonal Innovation: Real World Examples
OCI
k8s
Individual
Components
???? GKE, Etc.
Communities in the Ecosystem
Products in the Ecosystem

19. Orthogonal Innovation: Pros and Cons
Cons
• It’s messy, complicated
• Not every project needs to be a
platform for the world
Pros
• Constant integration of new
technology on multiple axes
• Build reliable supply chain, and
influence multiple supply chains
• Core platform gets lots of extra testing
and bug-fixing from multiple sources
• Reduces risk from external
communities adding/changing code

20. Further reading:
The Art of Community: http://www.artofcommunityonline.org/
InnerSource Commons: https://paypal.github.io/InnerSourceCommons/
Producing Open Source Software, by Karl Fogel: http://producingoss.com/
Core Infrastructure Initiative: https://coreinfrastructure.org/
Open Chain Project: https://openchainproject.org/
Roads and Bridges, by Nadia Eghbal: Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor
Behind Our Digital Infrastructure

21. Want in-depth content?
RSVP now for the 1st
OSEN Symposium, co-located with the Linux Foundation’s
Open Source Summit ($150/ticket):
● https://osen17.eventbrite.com/
● Open Source Summit attendees can also register for the event
● Want to sponsor? Contact me for details

23. Thank you!
How may we contact thee? Let me count the ways!
● Web site: https://osenetwork.com/
● Twitter: @osenetwork @johnmark
● Email: osen@johnmark.org
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