` Contributing to Open Source

Who Am I – Linux and Open Source Consultant – „Infrastructure Architect“ – Linux since 0.98 – IANAKH – Senior x-tend.be

X-Tend – Formerly known as Stone-IT Belgium – Rebranded in late 2003 – 8 Linux and Open Source experts – More in the group

X-Tend References – SPA – SPE – ACEA – Newtec – etc.

Who are you – Who is using Open Source Today ?

Who are you – Who is using Open Source Today ? – How many mails do you send per day ? "Shut down all Exchange servers on the world and some people will complain" "Shut down all Unix MTA's (Sendmail/Postfix/Exim) and the Internet will Die" (Same for the Apache vs IIS comparison )

Who are you – Who is using Open Source Today ? – How many mails do you send per day ? "Shut down all Exchange servers on the world and some people will complain" "Shut down all Unix MTA's (Sendmail/Postfix/Exim) and the Internet will Die" (Same for the Apache vs IIS comparison ) – Do you Google ?

What is Open source – Freedom: of choice, of vendor, of hardware – Collaboration is promoted by its license. – A platform created by Peer Review – More Secure than others, – Guarantee for continuity – Community working together – The defacto platform for innovation. (Flickr, Technocrati, Gmail,... ) "Standing on the shoulders of Giants"

Even more important – Standardisation – Open Protocols – Interoperability – Imagine the Internet today if nobody published HTTP specs. ==> Lots of open source implementations are the reference implementation.

What is open source NOT ? – Your free developer team – Free as in Beer – The solution to all your problems. – Getting you rich Quick.

How do OS projects start ? – Reference Implementations, this is how you do it. – Frustration, building a better alternative. – Vision, free as in speech – Maintenance To Expensive, eol products – Hobby Projects growing to fast – Academic Research projects (Xen, openMosix,..) – Egotripping – Reference Implementations, this is how you do it.

Who is writing all this stuff ? – Garage/Basement hackers ? – Professionals in their Spare time. – Users because they are forced due to the lack of vendor support. – Consultants frustrated by the lack of working proprietary alternatives – Professionals on Company time.

Who is writing all this stuff ? Professionals on Company time. Building something better than the corporate version, not being influenced by 5 layers of bad management Because the company needs it and it doesn't exist. Because it is the basis for their corporate product Because it is their business

The wrong kind of OS – Cancelled Products – End Of Life Products – "Oops 90% of the Chinese government still uses this" – “Lets Open Source this, then the Community will add those features and Fix the bugs”

Who is using Open Source EVERYBODY

Why are they using it Coders : – Want to learn, – Take libraries and platforms from project to project Corporate : – Freedom, no more vendor obligations – Continuity – Security – Stability

Why are they using it IT Companies : – Lowering solution cost – Lowering maintenance cost – Smart enough not to reinvent the weel

Where do OS projects end up ? – Some stuff goes to /dev/null – Lots of Niche markets – A huge portion goes mainstream – Linux, Apache, Samba – Glue, nobody knows them, nobody sees them, everybody uses them Operating Systems --> Application servers ! Destktop platforms --> Crossplatform apps

How do OS Projects grow ? – Developer gets an idea – Early adopters – Community grows – Articles are being written – Project goes mainstream – Project maintainer starts company – Company gets funded.

Which projects to use ? – Join the community – Gain Experience – Who wrote the code – Why has it been written ? – Who is using it ?

Today: – Industry experts decide to build a better version of their core product in Open Source OSA Foundation (Chandler) OpenNMS Alfresco Pentaho

How do companies make money ? – Support and/or Maintenance RedHat, Novell, MySQL, Jboss – Consulting : X-Tend, Jboss, etc – Books/Documentation - O'Reilly, all publishers – Dual Licensing MySQL - Redhat – Management Platforms RedHat, XenSource, Novell etc – Large vendors offer traditional services for their OSS projects IBM, HP, Sun, Novell

How do We contribute ? We contribute to existing projects Gnome Evolution OpenMosix Samba Squid Xen Linux Kernel

How do we contribute ? We start new projects OpenCRM OpenBiblio Deconf Juliux Etc..

How do we contribute ? - We test beta stuff, so you don't have to Xen, Samba, Redhat – We report Bugs, so you get working stuff *.* – We evaluate Mail server study Groupware Study Etc.

How do we contribute ? – We document and publish experiences openMosix Thin Client Xen Samba MySQL HA Squid etc For over 10 years now..

How can YOU contribute ? – Write code and publish it – Certainly if the application is not your core business but just a supporting part. – Review other code – Documentation (also enduser documentation) – Have bugs reported upstream – Test new versions BEFORE you go in production with them

Contributing to Security – Are you ashamed of the code you write ? – You can fix the bugs, TODAY. – Not having to wait for the next release cycle. – Peer review

Creating Communities: Around technology Around common problems => solving them once, => solving them together, => Not paying for them 42 times

What should you NOT pay for ? – Features everybody else has already paid for – Twice – The right to use something you don't own. – Forced Upgrades – Vendor Lock-In – "Free" Features you don't need

What should you pay for ? – Deploying stuff the right way. – Changes you need – Time spend to integrate – Time spend to improve – Tuning – Knowledge !

It's about spending less money, Or spending the same amount for lot's more !

Kris Buytaert

? ! ● Questions ?