Presentation material from the Finnish CNCF/Kubernetes Winter meet up about one large company's approach to open source

1. ENTERPRISE
OPEN SOURCE
HOW TO MAKE YOUR COMPANY
START CONTRIBUTING TO OPEN
SOURCE

2. oscar.renalias@acenture.com
@oscarrenalias
https://www.linkedin.com/in/oscarrenalias/
https://github.com/accenture

3. 3
ACCENTURE HAS
BEEN A BIG
CONSUMER OF
OPEN SOURCE
SOFTWARE

4. 4
AND SOME OF US
HAVE BEEN
WORKING TO
ADDRESS THAT

5. BECAUSE
WE LIKE IT
• AND BECAUSE WE THINK IT’S ONLY
FAIR
• AND BECAUSE WE ARE ALREADY
BUILDING CRITICAL STUFF FOR
CLIENTS ON OSS
• AND BECAUSE WE WOULDN’T HAVE IT
ANY OTHER WAY
WHY DO SOME OF
US CONTRIBUTE TO
OPEN SOURCE?

6. GROW THE TEAM
• Build expertise, gain
experience, and develop a
strong competency in the
software
• Improve resumes, gain
international recognition
• Get recognition for
Accenture’s contribution to
the open source community
• Improve Accenture’s
attractiveness
• Move bug fixes or feature
enhancements upstream
• Move patches upstream to
reduce future maintenance
• Influence the future of the
projects we depend upon
• Improve the performance of
the software
• Improve the documentation
• Improve the core code or
create a new feature
MEET CLIENT DEMANDS INVEST IN THE FUTURE
WHY DOES ACCENTURE THINK
THAT WE HAVE TO DO
CONTRIBUTE?

7. INTERNAL
COMMUNITY-
DRIVEN CULTURE
OPEN SOURCE
POLICY
GOVERNANCE
TRAINING AND
ENABLEMENT
COMMUNITY
CONTRIBUTIONS
THE PILLARS OF
ENTERPRISE
OPEN SOURCE
(AT ACCENTURE)
7

8. 8
COMMUNITY-DRIVEN CULTURE STARTS WITH
ALL OF US
InnerSource is the adoption and tailoring of Open Source development practices to internal software
development.
”SOCIAL” CODING
PLATFORM
VERSION CONTROL
”SOCIAL”
NETWORKING
Low-friction, developer-
centric platform: wiki, issue
management, artifact
repository, CI/CD,
container registry
Git Developer-centric
dashboard: project
streams, team streams,
etc., leaderboards

9. 9
TEH POLICY!11!!
• Describes what can and should not be
contributed
• Details methods to contribute including
public/private repository guidelines
• Understand difference between a donation
and a contribution
• Public fork vs upstream contribution vs
internal fork
• Leadership may authorize time and effort
to be contributed directly to OSS
communities (e.g., for bug fixes)
• Guidelines for personal contributions

10. DEALING WITH THE
INTRICACIES OF OPEN
SOURCE LICENSING
• Sometimes, we can’t just release everything we
build for contractual reasons
Open source
licensing is
complex, specially
when combined
with contractual
and intellectual
property
obligations
INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY &
OWNERSHIP
• The wrong choice of license could compromise a
contract or our business with a client
RISK &
LIABILITY
• GPL, LGPL are not an option for a commercial
business but how about everything else?
SELECTING THE
RIGHT LICENSE

11. 11
DECIDING WHERE AND
HOW TO CONTRIBUTE
Participation Guidelines
• Level of comfort in posting on forums
• Understanding what should and should not
be disclosed
• Know where and how to engage the OSS
community
Supporting the Community
• What is the prioritization of engagement in
the project?
Community Understanding
• How stable is the project?
• How is the project led?
Public Collaboration
• Have clear guidelines on what can be
published
• Feels comfortable collaborating externally on
ideas, bug reports, etc.
• Know the level of anonymity or public
disclosure they should take

12. 12
GETTING CONTRIBUTIONS
APPROVED
BEFORE
1. Fill in 10-page long Word template
2. Sit in call with legal team where you would be
grilled for about an hour
3. Wait
4. Wait a little longer
5. Maybe, get contribution approved
NOW
1. Fill in online form: provide description, select
license, and whether this contains work done
for a client
2. Get approval (takes about one day)
3. Request Github project, publish repo
4. ???
5. PROFIT

13. 13
• Funding – who pays for a team, internally, that is contributing
to open source after the project is over?
• Strong knowledge and “go-to” team of contribution policy
• Decides how the company/team contributes to the community
• Quickly determines what can and can not be contributed
• Creates the process by which a contribution is defined
GOVERNANCE

14. 14
Tools available internally to identify and document all open
source components in a codebase to mitigate license,
security and maintenance risks
LICENSE SCANNING

15. 15
• Internal preaching: webinars, training sessions, shameless
plugs of own projects
• Training: i.e. LF210: Fundamentals of Professional Open
Source Management
ENABLEMENT

16. 16
WHAT ARE WE DOING AT THE MOMENT?
REACTIVE INTERACTION
GATEWAY, CLOUD EVENTS
ACCENTURE DEVOPS
PLATFORM
KCSP
GITHUB, ENGINEERING BLOG
FOUNDATION
MEMBERSHIP

17. 17
LESSONS LEARNED
Building critical solutions on own OSS is
great but what happens when the project is
over?
OWNERSHIP &
FUNDING
Make it easy for everyone to contribute –
but ensure that there is an adequate level
of support for the tricky bits
KEEP IT SIMPLE
• Make it easy to contribute, but keep track
of what’s going on
GOVERNANCE
Code is not the only way to contribute to a
community
NOT ONLY CODE